Credibility
From NMC-Campus
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The Symposium on the Impact of Digital Media is actually part of a series of events taking place simultaneously all over the Internet and involving participants from dozens of countries. These participants include some of the world’s leading scholars on the topics of identity, credibility, and civic engagement, as well as hands-on users of digital media of all ages who are residents of Second Life, as well as a community of practitioners in more than 200 leading universities and museums across the world.
The scholar group is currently engaged in a set of high-level scholarly online dialogs on our three topics — identity, credibility, and civic engagement — taking place now in a Google Group. The second group, all residents of Second Life, are talking part in this 12-day symposium. The third group, mainstream NMC members, will participate in an NMC online conference taking place on the “flat-web” at the end of this month.
All three events are devoted to the same topics, which are informed by the NMC’s work with the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, a two-year project in which the NMC is helping to explore the impact of digital media on our lives in a variety of ways, and encouraging dialog among experts, visionaries, and thought leaders from around the globe.
This unique symposium brings that dialog to the current residents of Second Life. We are most interested in your perspectives, and encourage you to add your voices to this mix by adding your thoughts about the impact of digital media on Credibility under each of the following questions in the space below.
[edit] Credibility Question One
Are there differences in the abilities of youth and adults to assess the credibility of information found online today?
- Children need to be taught the skills required to assess the credibility of information found online , and in other areas. This is reflected in the UK government's National Literacy Strategy. A relevant example can be found here: The emphasis is on writing a balanced report and these skills lend themselves very well to online sources. This theme, that of analysing, information is woven throughout the UK National Curriculum in the areas of Mathematics, Science and the Social Sciences. As educators we accept that children need to be taught these skills. However, adults need them too and we presume that adults have them at our peril. The fact that 419 scammers and con-artists make can make a good living online confirms this. - Nolligan Nino"
- Absolutely. This skill is at least as important as math or science -- and easily more applicable to daily life.
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[edit] Credibility Question Two
What opportunities are currently being missed by colleges and schools to teach information literacy and the notion of credibility?
- I can only speak from my own experiences of UK education here, but I feel the current emphasis on paper and pencil methods, whilst building useful analytical skills could be accelerated if more school used online resources. For example, for a child to copy a passage takes effort and time if written by hand, but using copy and paste it is acheived in a few seconds allowing him or her to concentrate on interrogating and analysing the matters raised. A hyperlink to another site which holds a different view point is also a very powerful tool in the hands on any student. - Nolligan Nino"
- I agree very much with the above, and suggest that we are not taking as much advantage as we might to provide the same kinds of learning derived from hands-on activities like those above -- ie, if you take the time to hand-transcribe something I think you are much more likely to remember it -- perhaps if the results of searching and evaluatiing information were subjected to conversation and thought among friends, family, and classmates....the various perspectives could be used to help triangulate on credibilty and thus help peole learn how to evaluate what they find.
- If information literacy is the ability to "access, evaluate, organize, manipulate, and present information ", I see some missed opportunities at the college level. Some faculty focus on content to the exclusion of developing exercises and research opportunities that allow students to practice their info lit skills. I urge everyone to call their friendly librarian and get some ideas about discussing evaluation of resources on the Web and even in print!
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[edit] Credibility Question Three
Do you think that the dangers and/or opportunities afforded by technologies are different for youths versus adults? If so, how?
- As educators we have a 'Duty of Care' to our students so we must take any potential dangers seriously and conduct relevant Risk Assessments before proceeding. Adults need to adopt an online equivalent of 'caveat emptor'. As for opportunities, the Internet is the largest library in the history of mankind, the possibilities to enrich and educate are limited only by our imaginations. -Nolligan Nino"
- Hmmmm....vis-a-vis dangers, no I do not. Life has dangers, on line and offline. It is important for youth to see and know what they are, so they can either avoid or defend themselves. Protecting them too much is also a danger, as it leads to youth with no instinct for assessing danger.
- Since I teach young children I have to re-state that I am legally responible for them. For teenagers it is different. I regard the Internet as being 'out of school' and has the same dangers as taking children on a trip into Amsterdam. If organised well I could take them to a museum or art gallery, if badly organised they could end up in the Red Light District, and that is hardly appropriate for the very young. - Nolligan
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[edit] Credibility Question Four
What are the roles of corporate and governmental policies in helping people to find credible information online and protecting children from information that might be deemed by some as “harmful”?
- Since children in schools are effectively in 'loco parentis' of those institutions and all those working in schools have the 'duty of care' I referred to in question 3 it is paramount that government and local authorities do everything in their power to protect their charges. - Nolligan Nino"
- I think the government has no place in these decisions. I am very very worried about polices like the Online Predators Act replacing the collective power of the people with moral panic. The 'net should be free!
- Children do need to be protected from pedophiles, and there are many cases of these predators using chat rooms to prey on the vulnerable - Nolligan
- I don't see "pedators" as "information" and I understand that this discussion is about credibility of information. Government may have a role in protecting users from out-and-out fraud - but our government here in the USA has not proved to be the best steward when it comes to open access to the information we need to make informed decisions. We would do better to hav as little government interference as possible and have on-going discussions on how to evaluate the information we find - and that goes for children AND adults.
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[edit] Formatting answers to the questions
As you include your answers to these questions, you are encouraged to focus more on the ideas than the formatting, and so a simple approach has been chosen as an example. An asterisk followed by a space makes it a bulleted list item, and everything else can be plain text. Note that everything must be in a single paragraph with only a single carriage return at the end.
* Your perspective on the question would look like this.
