I am still trying to put together a lesson plan teaching students how to sift through vast internet content, assess authenticity of content, reliability of author, bias in writing, relevance and context of content.
I ran into this interesting article as an example of the potential junk/jokes out there. "Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" is an actual science paper accepted by a journal. This 'scholarly' paper contains the words "Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" repeated over and over again to fill 10 pages! Appropriate with scholarly paper, it also includes a flow chart & scatter plot chart. It is also in publishing format with an abstract, summary, and reference section.
The paper was written and submitted by Stanford Computer Science Associate Professor David Mazieres and Eddie Kohler, Associate Professor at Harvard Computer Science. It was submitted to a bogus, profit-making online journal that accepted it on the spot and even gave it an 'excellent' rating. The paper was submitted as a joke to test the reliability of predatory journal named above.
Internet content ranges the gamut of potential junk like to one above to 2nd graders creating class Prezi or glogster posters and everything in between.
It is an understatement to say it is daunting to sift through internet content. I have a lot of work to do on this lesson plan. Wish me luck!
Creating a lesson around internet searching is a very challenging task to say the least! It is very easy for students to stumble across inappropriate content without even realizing it. I even made this mistake myself. As you know, YouTube shows you other possible videos that might relate to the one you are viewing. Anyway, I was doing a lesson on the role of women in WWII and one of the videos on the side of the screen showed two women in bikinis getting ready to fight. Needless to say, a few females in the class were slightly offended.
ReplyDeleteOne tip I would recommend is to adjust your search settings in Google. Under the advanced settings, you can adjust different filters for your searches. You can also adjust the filter in YouTube by clicking on the safety tab.