MIL M4 - Activities

 Media and Information Literacy - Activities

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1. Reflecting on the core criteria of scientific information evaluation

1.1 Reflect on some important issues about science itself

Before reflecting on the core criteria of scientific information evaluation it would be advisable to reflect on some important issues about science itself, and as educators or librarians to help our pupils, students and the communities we serve understand science. Below you will find a series of short videos by techNyouvids, a free information service to help raise awareness about emerging technologies and associated issues, presenting and discussing science in an understandable manner for most people. After each video follows a quiz for better consolidation of the subjects presented. 

Furthermore, it is important that you search, choose, evaluate and study sources about relevant science topics to form a lateral opinion. A good source to start with is the following, that was first published in 1976, and has been translated into many languages : Chalmers, A. F. (2013). What is this thing called science?. Hackett Publishing.

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Activity 1

Video (duration 2m 01 sec) “This Thing Called Science Part 1: Call me skeptical” by techNyouvids is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)


Prompt your pupils, students or the community you serve to ask and discuss their own questions on the topic. Guide them to search, choose, evaluate and share relevant and reliable sources that answer their questions.

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Activity 2

Video (duration 2m 30 sec) “This Thing Called Science Part 2: Testing, testing 1-2-3” by techNyouvids is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)



Prompt your pupils, students or the community you serve to ask and discuss their own questions on the topic. Guide them to search, choose, evaluate and share relevant and reliable sources that answer their questions.

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Activity 3

Video (duration 2m 45 sec) “This Thing Called Science Part 3: Blinded by Science” by techNyouvids is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)



Prompt your pupils, students or the community you serve to ask and discuss their own questions on the topic. Guide them to search, choose, evaluate and share relevant and reliable sources that answer their questions.

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Activity 4

Video (duration 3m 01 sec) “This Thing Called Science Part 4: Confidently Uncertain” by techNyouvids is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)


Prompt your pupils, students or the community you serve to ask and discuss their own questions on the topic. Guide them to search, choose, evaluate and share relevant and reliable sources that answer their questions.

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Activity 5

Video (duration 2m 36 sec) “This Thing Called Science Part 5: Do the right thing” by techNyouvids is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)




Prompt your pupils, students or the community you serve to ask and discuss their own questions on the topic. Guide them to search, choose, evaluate and share relevant and reliable sources that answer their questions.

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Activity 6

Video (duration 3m 33 sec) “This Thing Called Science Part 6: Citizen Science” by techNyouvids is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)



Prompt your pupils, students or the community you serve to ask and discuss their own questions on the topic. Guide them to search, choose, evaluate and share relevant and reliable sources that answer their questions.

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1.2 Reflect on the core criteria of scientific information evaluation

Step 1: Instruct your pupils, students or the community you serve to search for sources on a topic of their interest, in a library catalog, a search engine like https://scholar.google.com/ or other 
Step 2: After retrieving their results, ask them on what criteria they would evaluate their sources and prompt them to discuss their answers
Step 3: Prompt them to watch the video below
Step 4: Prompt them to discuss the criteria of scientific sources’ evaluation contained in the video
Step 5: Ask them to download and save this excel file (M4-sources_evaluation) and instruct them to organize and evaluate their sources accordingly 

Watch this Interactive Video (duration 4m 14 sec) “Reflecting on the core criteria of scientific information evaluation” by EDUCABILITY is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) 




2. Reflecting on the core criteria of online information evaluation

2.1 Reflect on some important issues about online information

1. Ask your students, pupils, or the community you serve  to watch this Video (duration 4m 9sec) “Manage Use Create: How to evaluate online information” by Manage. Use. Create. Digital Literacies @ UOW is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)


Step 1: After watching the video above, ask your students, pupils, or the community you serve to form groups of three-five people and to search for information on a given topic, e.g., about social sciences, language, natural sciences and mathematics, technology, the arts, history, etc.

Step 2: Ask each group to make a list of the 5 top more relevant websites they found and tell the groups to compare their lists

Step 3: Ask two separate groups to re-type a same website’s URL, by deleting all the text after ".com" in the URL (including the / ), leaving a space, and typing Wikipedia

Step 4: Ask two groups to read carefully the information provided in the "Wikipedia" about this website and prompt each of the two groups to decide separately how valid the website is

Step 5: Ask each group to present and justify their decision about the website’s validity to the rest of the class

Step 6: Prompt trainees to do this activity https://cybersmileeducation.org/en-us/content-authenticity-2/ by debating each possible choice before answering each question

2. Read the follwing source : "Lor, P., Wiles, B., & Britz, J. (2021). Re-thinking information ethics: truth, conspiracy theories, and librarians in the COVID-19 era. Libri71(1), 1-14." by clicking here (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/libri-2020-0158/html?lang=de)


2.2 Reflect on the core criteria of online information evaluation

1. Read the following source: "Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers Subtitle:...and other people who care about facts. 

LICENSE

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.


UPDATED RESOURCES FOR 2021

Since the publication of this book in February 2017, I have streamlined the way I teach the “four moves” that are central to this book. While many instructors prefer the detailed approach to these skills laid out in this book, instructors (and students) may want to check out these more recent resources using the same methods that have been published since.

  • The Check, Please! Starter Course presents the four moves with an updated acronym “SIFT”, and some more recent examples.
  • The Ctrl-F Project by CIVIX is a short curriculum aimed at high-school students but suitable for early college students as well.

While these resources use the new acronym SIFT, the moves are essentially the same, and if desired can be integrated into the teaching of this book, or used on a stand-alone basis.

2. Do this free online courseHow to Spot Misinformation Online 
In this online course from MediaWise for Seniors, you will learn simple digital literacy skills to outsmart algorithms, detect falsehoods and make decisions based on factual information.
Start Anytime
Category: Fact-Checking & Media Literacy
Tags: Media literacy, MediaWise, Mediawise for seniors, Self-directed course
(© All Rights Reserved Poynter Institute 2022
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Inc. is a non-profit 501(c)3. The EIN for the organization is 59-1630423. You can view The Poynter Institute’s most-recent public financial disclosure form 990 here.) - https://www.poynter.org/


3. Access this reliable webpageToo much information: a public guide to navigating the infodemic - First Draft (firstdraftnews.org)  (© 2022 First Draft), read and watch short videos about infodemic and why is it a problem, why do people share, how to talk to family and friends about disinformation, the need for ‘emotional skepticism’, how to verify the source of a tweet or social post on your phone, and more. 

4. Do this interactive exercise that will help you verify images, places, and accounts that you find online : Online Verification Challenge (firstdraftnews.org)

5. Engage in EUNOMIA - https://eunomia.social/videos

"EUNOMIA is developing the first social media environment designed to prioritise trust over likes. Powered by Mastodon and supported by a unique peer-to-peer and blockchain infrastructure, it is fully decentralised and disintermediated. Its open-source tools help the user quickly and confidently assess the trustworthiness of information shared through EUNOMIA without relying on any third party expert or social media platform to do it for them."

6. Raise your awareness about deepfakes by watching WITNESS Media Lab | Deepfakery: A Livestream Talk Series and Exploration of Critical Questions - WITNESS Media Lab  and/or test your ability to spot deepfakes: DeepFakes, Can You Spot Them? (mit.edu)  

Last modified: Saturday, 28 January 2023, 5:01 PM