Thing #6 - Digital Citizenship (Hoax Sites & CyberSafety)

Teachers and students need to know how to distinguish between reliable websites and those that contain false or inaccurate information. The Joyce Valenza criteria is a helpful tool for evaluating whether or not a website is a hoax. The first site that I decided to evaluate using this criteria was Google Job Opportunities.

Google Job Opportunities is a rather creatively designed website. It's credibility at first appearance seems reputable since the URL includes http://www.google.com/. Considering this, it appears that the Google company itself is aware of this website or purposefully had it published. There is, however, no author or name of any specific person associated with the designing or publishing of the website. In regard to accuracy, the page is well constructed, but contains a fair number of smart or comical statements such as: "This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are... capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as...  a steady supply of oxygen." The page is dated with 2011 which makes the information old since it is advertising for a job position that is to be available in the spring of 2007. There are no sources for verifying the information and the links on the web page take you to unrelated pages within the real google website. The scope or purpose of the page appears to be to provide an entertaining way of promoting and increasing public awareness of the Google site.

WEBSITE #2:

A second page that I visited and critiqued using the Joyce Valenza criteria was California Velcro Crop Under Attack. This website appears to be authored by Ken Umbach. This name is hyperlinked, however, and takes you to a biography page of Ken Umbach. This biography page informs you, however, that the biography given is "totally bogus". When the URL of the website is truncated, you are directed to the hosting site http://www.inreach.com/ which indicates that the site is a personal website. The information presented on the website is clearly inaccurate to anyone who is familiar with the composition of Velcro and how it is manufactured. The information could be misleading, however, to children and those who have had little experience with using Velcro. The website appears to have been published in 1993 and then has a postscript added from December of 1996. There are no sources within the site that could be used to help confirm the reliability of the information. The purpose of the website is unclear other than perhaps providing a little humor to the reader. Below is a screenshot of a graph from the web page which intends to show a pattern of decline in Velcro "harvest" from the years 1985 to 1992.

Visiting and critiquing the above two websites helped me better understand the importance of educating students regarding information on the website. These sites demonstrated to me that students need to be taught how to be selective regarding the sources of information that they use from the Internet.

My plan for how to educate my students about Hoax/Bogus sites would be in the first place to take them on a visit to a few of these sites and allow them to have first-hand experience on evaluating the website. I would present the site and then ask them to give any clues as to why or why not the information should not be trusted. I would then guide them through questioning and demonstration to consider the various aspects of the Joyce Valenza criteria.

A second activity that I could do with my students is to have them research a specific topic and see if they can find a hoax site that presents inaccurate information. I would guide them in this by advising them to do a keyword search that would quickly bring up the inaccurate information. For example, if they were researching the planet Mars, they could search for "discovered on Mars" and see if they locate any unreliable or unverifiable information.

EDUCATING ACTIVITIES:

#1. To help my students understand the dangers of cyber-bullying or publishing personal information on the web, I would have them read and respond to the article regarding Shannon, a young girl who unknowingly is tracked to her home by a police officer. (This article entitled "Shannon's Story" is available online at http://www.ollnet.com/school/faculty/DonRoque/shannon.htm)

#2 Another activity that I could do with my students to teach them about the proper use of the Internet would be to have them take the Netiquette Quiz and evaluate how well they do. This quiz is designed to educate and inform those who take it regarding proper netiquette (do's and don'ts) for Internet usage and communication.

Content Standards:

Aligned to the NETS-T: 1.b, 2.a, 2.b, 3.a, 3.d, 4.a, 4.b, 4.c

Connections to Marzano Strategies: Objectives and Feedback; Generating and Testing Hypothesis