This chapter reminded me of an article I read in Wired magazine about a year ago. Since then it has been something on my mind. Is this really a novel issue or is it just something that we deal with everytime there is a major change in medium? It seems like the ability to differentiate between a bogus source and a credible one is contingent upon the individual's prior understanding. If students do not know about what they searching for, they will not be able to disregard some sources that have no credibility.
This is the very same issue that bioinformatics deal with. While the engineers and the programmers write the scripts that are necessary to parse through the huge amount of information coded in RNA sequences, it is the biologists who know what the sequences mean biologically, and thus tell the engineers what they are looking for. This is also an example of how one can get around this issue: collaborating with others in your community. What are some other ways we can show students that there are non technological ways to solve issues that arise from using technology?
Also, understanding how search engines work has helped me in my endeavors in the bioinformatics lab. Where we used BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) to analyze sequences, it definitely helped to understand that when you were doing a google search, you werent searching for full sentences or phrases, but rather, for the computer, all it saw was a sequence of characters.
This makes one wonder. Twitter seems to have made its mark and it appears that it is here to stay (seeing as the mass media has bought into it, and all newscasters, reporters, and journalists have their twitter handles shown on the news and in articles), when will it be okay to start citing twitter for research papers, and how do you teach how to differentiate between a valuable tweet as compared to one that is not as valuable?
I think you raise a very interesting point. Certain sources on twitter are relevant and therefore why shouldn't students cite them? And how do we teach students what is credible or not? Just because a source is a .gov or .edu does that make it reliable? Do we as teachers really know whether a source is credible or not? We need to answer these questions ourselves before we shut down students use of sources in their papers.
ReplyDeleteThe Twitter point that you raise totally blew my mind. I never thought of it like that and I feel like you opened my eyes to something I should have been seeing this whole time! It's so true, although there is so much wasteful and irrelevant information posted on Twitter, it is also where a lot of people get their news updates and definitely sports updates. I wonder if anyone has tried to use this in a paper or any other type of report. Such an interesting question and I'm intrigued to see where this goes in the future.
ReplyDeleteJason F,
ReplyDeleteYou brought up some good points in your blog. The issue of credible sources and if one day we will be able to use Twitter is an interesting point and I wonder if this will ever be used as a citable source. It reminds me of when Wikipedia was first invented and everyone was citing it for sources, till we found out it is an online encyclopedia we as users can edit. Teaching the students about credible sources to use for their school assignments is vital to their academic careers. The BLAST site you brought up is also something new I would like to look into. I don’t use Google for school searches but other cites to utilize for credible sources for my papers will be of great assistance. A final point I would like to make is the expansion of your reading materials to include information that is not education related. I need to broaden my reading material to include information that is not education related and also things that the children read, to stay current on their interest.
BLAST is actually specifically for DNA/ RNA sequences, but the philosophy of it being a "search engine" specifically for the sequences is what i was referring to.
DeleteThe point about citing twitter as a source is a legitimate one. Much of what is on certain websites is subjective to being a legitimate source or an illegitmate source so it is hard to really say. I feel as though the context of what is credible will change over time. 10 years ago, I don't think people would believe that you'd be able to access a lot of information on "google books" and cite it as a good resource, however, now it is the standard. It will be interesting to see over time what happens.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a student must have prior knowledge about the internet and validity of sources to truly understand which websites are credible. That being said, I feel that it is our job to make sure they have this knowledge regardless of their age. We cannot just assume they have these skills because they might be in a higher grade. I think that the teaching of different URLs is a good strategy. I also think we should teach our students about biases or hidden agendas that websites might have. In response to your twitter question, I think that a valueable tweet depends on who wrote it and what you are using it for. Obviously, a tweet regarding international politics from a baseball player is not as credible as one from a Harvard professor. That being said, it would be reversed if the subject of the tweet was related to a fastball. This is an interesting question and I am not exactly sure how we differentiate between them.
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