Notes   /   6 February 2019

Getting Started with Web Literacy

Today, you'll get started working with a group of peers for the digital polarization or web literacy project. After the groups are assigned, find your team and begin your work together.

First, discuss what you learned from Mike Caulfield's video. Did his analysis of search results surprise you? Have you learned the CRAAP method for evaluating sources, and if so, what do you think of Mike's critique of it?

Next, try out a quick fact-checking activity from one of the examples listed on fourmoves.blog. I recommend the smart toilet or the D-Day photo. Which of the four moves leads you to a conclusive answer -- checking for previous work, going upstream, reading laterally, or circling back?

Finally, take a look at the sample questions available for researching and come up with your top three choices. For each of these, check for previous work to make sure it isn't easily answered or already debunked, and try to find questions that are nuanced enough to require a thoughtful explanation but not so controversial that believing the truth of a claim comes down to a matter of opinion or ideology.

Send me your top three choices in a Slack message, and I'll attempt to collate and assign these in class.