How do we evaluate sources through the internet noise? It has everything on there! The “Web Literacy: Challenges…” piece identifies that “…web sites advocate, sell, entertain, opine, and present research and some sites try to do it all" (333). So how do we teach our charges to wade through this noise?
My use of internet research comes with years and years of filtering through the noise from the information highway originating from before even the online web experience was invented. My thinking always comes with a “where do you get that information” evaluation. I rarely thought (consciously) of myself making that evaluation until after I entered university study and found I had to make that determination daily in my reading, researching and writing. I suspect most of us in post-graduate work have always done this type of inquiry on some level whether we knew it or not and I bet a lesser number of those with no college background probably make the same kind of evaluation as a matter of habit. It would be interesting to track that habit. But, how do we teach our charges to wade through this noise? “Assessing the value of information…leads naturally to a critical approach to the Web… (348)” and seems to be a good place to start to address this need.
Should the first question of source-use be "where from?" or "why this?" I tend to think that the second question informs the first (e.g., what does the involvement of this source do? what does it make possible in the build-up of this or that position?).
ReplyDeleteI'm with you there. Asking "how do I determine the source is reliable?" A personal blog of a man who played golf his whole life, had two uncles on the pro tour and a dad who taught golf at a private course seems like a reliable source of info as far as that goes. On the benefits to the heart of an eighty year old playing a round of golf wouldn't. I like the idea raised by the Sorapure, Inglesby, and Yatchisin piece, that it's about learning to evaluate the source and (presumably) not the "where" it's from. Like the upshot point within my presentation from in the earlier part of the semester - with wikipedia content- if we're citing the info- how do we know where it's from - and who wrote it? ...let alone, we still have to evaluate if the info is reliable. Another interesting note from the Sorapure, Inglesby, and Yatchisin piece, is so far, it seems we only have the criteria from evaluating print spources to guide us- we need a new set of criteria for the Web! I'm building on evuating safety to browsers and content apropriateness for children- one medium's criteria applys to the next - and that one's then, to the next, ad infinitum. At my FYC level- it almost seems like too much work to evaluate sources from the web to write a little comp paper. One can start to learn about it. though.
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