A small fish in a big pond of Fark

This is a post that I have been hesitant to write, because it seems SO self-serving, but enough people on my social networks have asked about the experience and it has gotten me thinking about some larger issues, so there you go. Interested in the article that got picked up by Fark.com? Read on. Just want the rant? skip to the reflection.

My first tweet about it: Wow...just wow.

How the Fark it happened:

The subject of the post has to do with the #theatershooting and some thoughts I had on digital citizenship. You can read it HERE. What I do not detail in the post is that I was on vacation in Northern Michigan at the time of writing, so at 11:00 PM or so (while playing TICKET TO RIDE), I posted (knowing from experience that this pretty much doomed the post to initial low numbers, but ah well).

I didn't look at my email until 7am (comics to be read and all). A friend of mine emailed that he was enthusiastic about the article and wanted to flag it on Fark.com. Here is the thing: I don't really know what happened next. I know that I received another communication that it was going up on the national boards about 2am, which means one or more people with the power to pull the trigger liked what was written or at least thought it worthy of discussion/flaming. :)

Since it had been up for about six hours, I logged in to see if i noticed any spike in numbers. I had more views at that moment than any other post...ever. In fact, it had already doubled my most popular post in the wee hours of the morning between 2am and 8am. *jawdrop*

It was a nice weekend. Numbers were off the scale. There were over a hundred comments on Fark.com and another handful on the post itself (which is rare for my blog). The comments were generally positive and a few reached the level of insightful, supportive, or interesting. There was a little thread degeneration and 2nd amendment grandstanding. There were also a number of people who thought that the post was tl;dr and verbose (in that it used words like verbose :) ) -- in other words, it was a good exercise in the discourse which has been my theme for the summer.

My fark-enthusiast friend told me that it was relatively well received... a lot more positively than most blogs/first time posts, so that was nice to hear. My in-laws began asking me what to do with this new found fame, and I did briefly entertain the idea of follow-ups or trying to create a fark-acceptable voice -- and I cringed internally. It took me a number of years to check my ego in order to be a better teacher, techie, and human being and I could see that door to the worst part of my personality opening a crack. (hence me not even wanting to write this reflection).

The Farking Aftermath (yes, now i'm just having fun)

• My blog almost tripled in numbers. There was a lot of secondary pick-up from other blogs and regeneration sites and analytics does a pretty good job of figuring which hits are spam (interestingly, older posts saw a much higher increase in comment spam than the popular one).
• I picked up a few followers on the blog and a few more followers on twitter.
• A lot of FB friends (and twitter colleagues) were excited to see the post on Fark, which was flattering and cool.
• Numbers on the blog are back to normal. The post that started it all is still the most popular one day-to-day except for the day of a new entry (it has replaced the both "defining BYOT/D" post and "Tweeting about Lord of the Flies" as my constant background noise entry).

Reflection:

It is kind of a thrill and an ego boost to see the kind of numbers that I assume some of the more famous bloggers get regularly (although I am not talking about uber-numbers...wow, its no wonder marketers need Klout or some equivalent to succeed).

But what i realized...(and maybe this is why I am writing this)

I think that we as educators in social media are at risk of falling into the same type of trap that I reference in the posting and to a greater extent in my breakdown of PLNs, confirmation bias and echo chambers in postings over this last summer. 

When I log into #edchat, or #byotchat, #flipclass or #pblchat, etc., I know that I am going to be chatting with hard working, innovative teachers who, for the most part, agree with me in theory if not in the details. We all believe in the importance of individualizing for students and feel that the culture of standardized testing is leading us down the wrong path. We believe that there is a wide gulf between the educators who care for kids, work with them day-to-day and try to instill a love of subject matter and life-long learning from the politicians, corporate education lobbyists and talking heads who seem to have the inside track to hearings on capital hill. 

When we discuss new ideas or ways to get started on a new method of learning, the conversations and links are both thrilling and overwhelming. But when we discuss the state of education, we all do the twitter equivalent of shaking our heads (literally, #smh) or making fun of the powers-that-be. I say this not to diminish the power of the former (it is the new professional development) or to discount the latter (we work in a world with far too little camaraderie and support). I say this because the conversation needs to be held beyond the walls of our various hashtag-PLNs.

We, the committed and engaged educators, have a responsibility to ourselves and our students to take these conversations into the marketplace of ideas. We need to share our perspective and worldview with non-educators. Because if enough people outside of our field begin to weigh-in on the ridiculousness that is being spouted in the name of an ill-conceived measure of progress, we might actually be able to change something.

This one is going around on Facebook right now. Ha!

My suggestions:

1. Be loud and in some cases obnoxious about what is going on in education. When someone brings up an educational idea in conversation, share with that person what the impact of that policy would be. We are the classroom teachers and our opinion matters. 
2. Refuse to be labeled as part of the status quo. My friend (and former debater) @JakeBonifield really drove this one home for me this week. If we allow ourselves to be labeled as defenders of the status quo then we face two problems. First, we lose the ability to share changes that we are making and to contribute to the discussion of problems that we actually face. Second, and more insidious, we get to be written off in the discourse of education as self-interested and protectionist. Look, is it silly to base teacher compensation on a test score that has been shown to have alternate causality well out of the teacher's control? absolutely. But if the only thing people hear from us is "merit pay is bad", then we become the whiners who can be ignored.
3. Begin with Parents and Students. As we have been working on our BYOT program and introducing our concept of digital citizenship to our community, I have been amazed at the acceptance and enthusiasm from parents, alums, and even students. When they hear that we have been looking at the problems of modern culture and its impact on education and working with technologists, experienced educators, and families to address those concerns they are thrilled. And they tell their friends. And the word spreads.
4. Continue the conversation in the general discourse. As we find our voices as reasonable advocates of change that will actually improve education, we need to message that not just on twitter but on newsgroups, sites, and other places where people gather to discuss. Refer interested people to the robust conversation that is taking place on the best educational blogs. (thx. to @dugitman of Downtown Comics for making the next step clear).

Sometime in the last five years and unbeknownst to us, we became the whipping boy for all that was at issue in education. The cultural shift happened fast and sudden and made it so that some of us were unable to respond with logic or reason or even a "seriously?" 

The recovery from that is going to be long and difficult because we, as educators, don't have the money or the influence to get to speak on Capital Hill like the representatives of the Gates Foundation. Change is going to take time because politicians are almost without exception two-faced on the issue: praising specific individual teachers but decrying faceless "bad educators" in the next soundbyte.

But we have our schools, our learning networks, and social media. We can use our voices within the populous to share our expert perspective. We can talk to others about positive changes that we are making and how we are measuring and demonstrating the impact of those changes on our students.

If enough of us do this, then we can begin to break into the channels of the common discourse. We can become the voices that must be heard. We can be invited to share our ideas and visions, our successes and our challenges. We can break through the money-influence barrier that separates us from the politicians who make our lives more difficult.

Heck, we might even get an article on Fark.com.

The Information Skills for the 24/7 News Cycle Age: An Analysis of the Reporting of #theatershooting

Abstract: an analysis of high-impact news stories and the 24 hour analysis-reporting cycle as it impacts the teaching of communications and information literacy.

I think the best description of the news-commentary-begets-more-news cycle I have heard came from Jon Stewart on the daily show. I looked (lightly) for the specific clip, but could not find it. If I do, I will be sure to link to it (thx to commenter Slowdog for the link). Essentially:

• News Channel Reports factual data
• During the commentary/analysis period, the data is interpreted to draw a more meaningful/slanted conclusion to the benefit of the station, political bias, commentator, ratings, etc.
• During the next NEWS period, the conclusion is reported as breaking news about the original story citing experts, sources, etc.

This is one of the examples that we use in #digcit to discuss PLN bias and the need to be more savvy about news in the modern era than ever before.

Tragic News Reporting in a 24/7 World

When I woke up this morning, I had every intention of working on a blog post ranting on the House committee hearings to give "Highly Qualified" designation to Teach-for-America graduates or finish up my #bbw12 posts with thoughts on the last keynote...

but, when it rains, it pours.

The first item on my news-reader described the tragedy of the Colorado shooting at the premiere of "Dark Knight Rises" midnight showing -- details are still coming in about this awful event (which is part of the point) and I will leave it to others to assign blame and find meaning...that is for another day and more ambitious people than me.

As I walked into the living room, the TV was already on a national news channel piecing together information and trying to put some meaning or reason upon the chaos. There were very few details at that point and within about 30 minutes the repeat of information made it clear that all of the essential data that the news had, I had absorbed. One hour later (Note: I am in a house full of people watching the news -- my inclination would have been to change the channel -- "0" on Feeling according to the Myers-Briggs), only one new piece of information was being reported:

the mother of the suspect had said to ABC news, "You have the right person. I need to call the police. I need to fly to Colorado," (exact words from Mercury News).

When the mother's statement was released, a careful caveat was given, namely that the statement a) could have been nothing more than confirming a name, b) could be that statement of a person in shock or coping with overwhelming information (certainly), c) did not imply much of anything on face.

My wife and I left the cabin to replace a flat tire.

When we returned, the news was still on. There was still only one story. The significant change was that we had moved out of the fact-news part of the news cycle/day and into the commentary part of the day, which was filled with analysis..

A few hours later, the mother's same statement was being picked apart by multiple retired profilers, three news analysts, and a supplemental scroll of social media commentary along the bottom of the screen. One expert went so far as explain that this mother's statement along with the incident itself was enough to show that there would probably have been indications of psychopathic tendencies demonstrated as early as age 5 (I added the emphasis) - so much for those caveats, neh?

As the afternoon commentary gave way to a news break, my jaw dropped as the news reporter updated the facts of the case known, including a tidbit that experts have begun piecing together a profile of the suspect, including potential childhood signs of behavior. After searching for an hour, looking through different sources, and checking my handy-dandy PLN, there was no indication of this information beyond the speculative comment of one person who had researched no background, conducted no personal interviews, and had no firsthand contact with the suspect, parents, neighbors, or even a kindergarten teacher.

The Stewart Cycle was complete.

Reflection: The Impact of the News-Commentary Symbiosis on Classroom Teaching

I hesitated to write this one so early, since I do NOT want to trade on the misery of others (even we strong "T"s have some couth). But this was such a clear example of something that I suspect goes on every single day. And, if it does, we need to completely rework what we think of in terms of Communications 101, the teaching of research and biases, and even some of the newer lessons on #infowhelm such as PLN development and filtering skills.

Roughly speaking, students should be developing the following skills or, lacking that, should be learning systems that will give them the following information:

Trackback Mechanisms: The ability to trace the origin of a piece of information to its original source. This becomes particularly complicated in the 24-hour news-commentary-news cycle since the need to tag sources in a 30 second soundbyte is often severely diminished to "experts" or "this just in, some say that..."

Development of Strong, Muli-level, Variable bias PLNs: A persons learning network, the web of trusted sources, must include more than echo-chamber inducing conclusions, particularly in an age where commentators provide the analysis that becomes the next hour's news brief. This will be a longer post as we get closer to the school year and the information literacy/research section of the #digcit class. (I started discussing this as it applies to classrooms here, applied to to politics in the Big Tents post, and added a little bit of religion to the mix in this post --ok, this one i think about a lot).

Opportunities to practice Claim Analysis: So much of what we are told takes place in a tone of incontrovertible facts (complete with colorful infographics) that we must allow students the chance to pick apart the actual data and see if the conclusion matches. We cannot rely on the the fact-checking of the news agencies, but must instead use their articles as the source of our own fact-checking.

Credential Analysis: I watched at one point as a CIA profiler, an FBI former profiler, and a psychiatrist who consulted on multiple spree killings went at each other in a barely moderated forum. They referred to the others as ill-informed, dangerous, and irresponsible. I am sure that it made for great TV, but in terms of developing any kind of understanding of the topic at hand, the undercutting made for awful conclusion drawing. We must help students develop a filter of not just information but also a filter of the credentials of potential sources. The critical questioning ability that used to only be necessary for reporters, lawyers, and job interviewers is now an essential skill for well-informed citizens in general.

This is in addition to an added emphasis on the development of information filtering systems (both automated such as RSS feeds and manual scans for much of what was describe above). And introductory lessons on logical constructions and common logical fallacies, would probably also be necessary to be able to pick apart some of the issues I have described.

Where do we teach this? At Brebeuf Jesuit, the first taste of this will come formally in the Digital Citizenship class. Every Freshman takes the course. In order to increase the time given to this we have moved away from other topics that we have felt are less vital. But a one semester freshman class will not be enough. Opportunities to practice this level of information criticism must be used throughout high-school and college (and probably introduced even earlier). Application opportunities exist in Social Studies, English, Religion and more.

We are past the time where we can rely on the conclusions of experts and those who interview the experts to act as our filters. We are past the time where students need only be taught to make sure that a source has the  proper bona fides to be trusted.

It is time that we take responsibility for our own information management systems and develop tools and curriculum that provide students the skills and capacity to take responsibility for theirs.

Teaching Discourse within Disagreement - A Quora-inspired blogpost

I am an occasional Quora user. I love the concept of answering a question as fully and accurately as possible and having it crowdsourced for accuracy.It is the next extension of Wikipedia. I also feel guilty that I really only feel qualified to answer questions about Batman, BYOT, and an occasional entry on some aspect of #digcit.


So when is saw this question come across my screen:
How can Obamacare be explained in layman's terms?


I was determined to take a crack at it. I sat down to write and opened up a few screens to fact check and when I was finished, I realized that I had not come even close to answering the question. So I never posted.


This was the first paragraph of what i wrote:

Wow. This might be one of the most challenging questions I have seen recently. Urban Dictionary describes "Layman's Terms" as an attempt to "describe a complex or technical issue using words and terms that the average individual can understand" -- I would add to that dictionary that most people who ask the question are seeking "just the facts" without a particular bias or slant, since they often are looking to draw their own conclusions. And even the term "Obamacare" was, and to many still is, a pejorative term for the Affordable Care Act that was meant to imply, among other things, a) that it was one person's idea and  b) a big brother-esque totalitarian solutions (remember the "death boards"?). 

So I scrapped my attempt to answer the question. But that started one of those thought spirals that brought me back to my "Teach the Controversy" series (Part I, Part II, and the PLN-based Part III). This was made even more poignant by Sunday's Mass and the subsequent discussions that happened (I'll get to that part in a second).


Interlude - A Peek Behind the Curtain
I remember one of the more frustrating moments of my Senior year was receiving an assignment to write a research paper. Attached to the assignment description was a list of verboten topics such as abortion, the death penalty, and passing out condoms in school. There were the usual grumbles but the teacher was adamant that these topics had been written about to death. 


A year later, I had the opportunity to do one of my first observations in teacher-training at that high school. During this one week intensive, I got to look behind the curtain into the mysterious teacher's lounge. In classic fly-on-the-wall mode, I got to hear about a variety of things. I remember my shock that teachers knew exactly what was going on in the back of the debate bus (yikes!) as well as who-was-dating-whom and other top-secret teenage lore.


During one of these discussions, the topic of the research paper topics came up. I listened as I heard teachers extol the policy of limiting topics that would cause the student's to lose focus on correct structure, cause arguments that would never be settled, and force teacher's to tip their hand to their own opinions. Through the conversation, it became clear that for all but a few of the oldest teachers, these topics had not been written about "to death" in class -- they had not been written about at all for years!
End Interlude 


I think that we are beginning to reap the results of this policy...and as educators, I think it falls to us to begin to fix the problem -- one controversy at a time.

Fortnight of Freedom:
A Real World "Teach the Controversy" Application

If you are not Catholic, you may not be aware that we are currently in the middle of a celebration, a movement, a protest called the Fortnight for Freedom. This is the name of a series of articles, speeches, homilies, etc. in protest over the Combination of the Affordable Care Act's demand for insurance coverage of certain routine/preventative/health promoting services and an HHS sub-committee's determination that one of those services in the area of women's health should be contraception. You can read the Kaiser Family Foundation's summary here. Note I did not say its unbiased description -- that is kind of the point I am going to try to make -- While I think the summary is accurate and accounts for arguments on both sides of a controversial topic, that is no longer the measure of "unbiased" in American discourse.


Unbiased, has taken an Orwellian shift to mean its opposite. In order to be considered "unbiased" you must now present information from the political, religious or other perspective of the reader.


I sat in church and listened to the homily of my friend and Priest as he explained that this was not an issue of contraception but was an issue of Religious Freedom. More importantly, it was an issue of religious discrimination, since insular churches (predominantly ministering, educating, helping) people of a single faith could be exempt but churches with outreach (read Catholic schools, Catholic hospitals, among others) could not be exempt. -- In a moment i have since come to regret, I walked out.

• I sat on the steps of the parish with my Transformer Prime and began reading the letter from the Bishop that the priest had been quoting -- it outlined the case for religious discrimination. 
• I went back and read the reaction from Church leader's when the coverage was first announced -- very little about Religious Freedom in that context. The concern then was that Church dollars (in the form of payments to insurers) would be used to fund contraception that is against the tenets of that faith -- good point, thought I. 
• Reading further, I found that there had been a compromise made that would force the insurance companies in these situations to cover the full cost of contraception without payment from the Church or the individual being a factored into the cost model.
• I went back to the Bishop's letter written weeks after this compromise. It clearly talked about the church being forced to "fund and facilitate" contraception. No mention of the policy change. The language was now much more nuanced with the vague "facilitate" taking on strange, non-layman meanings and the term "funding" being applied only under that  "if-we-pay-for-thing-A-then-there-will-be-money-for-someone-else-to-pay-for-thing-B" kind of way.

This was a lot more complicated than the homily made it out to be. The homily was a call to arms, complete with a concluding litany-of-saints invoking images of people being forced to say prayers in homes with darkened curtains and underground Eucharist.

My wife, an OBGYN and much better writer than I am, wrote a letter outlining her reaction to the priest and he asked if we could have dinner. After a wonderful evening with chatting, fellowship, and a good meal, we sat down to discuss.

Let me repeat that last line, it's important: We sat down to discuss.

• We outlined points of view. 
• We repeated what each other said to be sure that we understood it. 
• We spoke with passion about our feelings, but not dismissive of the passionate feelings of others. At one point, my wife was reading the language of the final rule, the priest was reading documents from the Bishops at USCCB.org, and the Google TV, was showing the news articles during the shift in tone from the funding-issue to the religious-freedom issue.

We identified areas of common ground and areas of further discussion. We talked about actions that could be taken to address the larger issue of a corruption of human sexuality. We learned from each other.

In a broader context, we talked about the polarization of politics, religion and society in general. We talked about confirmation bias and echo-chambers, where we dismiss that with which we do not immediately because there are always hundreds of sources that confirm our belief, so how could we be wrong? We talked about raising a generation of children without the ability to see past their own perspective.

Reflection

As educators, we have to embrace the opportunities for controversy. In those moments and those topics lie the opportunity to teach the fundamentals of discourse and persuasion. To teach how to dissect the biases of our own perspective and work with people from differing points of view on finding common ground. 

Gary Stager, at #ISTE12, chastised educators who force students to "make presentations on topics they don't care about to audiences that don't actually exist". We need to listen to this truth. Teach the controversy...better yet, let the students teach the controversy while we guide them on the fundamentals of finding accurate information, deconstructing claims and identifying evidence and flaws in logic, and building consensus with people who did not already agree with us.

Will this increase standardized test scores? Probably, but that's not why we should do it.

• We should do this because it is too easy today to live in an info-laden world where everyone agrees with you.
• We should do this because students need a place and an environment in which they can learn to ask questions, disagree, and change the minds of other while being open to having their own opinion change
• We should do this because it might be the most important 21st century skill.

Let's stop having students write about "safe" topics they don't care about. Let's stop hiding behind a bland vernier of unbiased objectivity that no student believes anyway. 

We have a month left until school begins...let's start changing the world.

On Vivid Descriptions and Big Tents: Breaking Down the Claim for Fewer Teachers

An analysis of the most recent attack on teachers -- that there are just too many of them.


for those of you who have watched the new Jen and JD Show or followed the blog/twitter, you'll know that a recurring theme in my thought process is my slightly shocked reaction to the attack on teachers in recent years. Given that teachers are not a strong political group, that the unions in general have lost their power, and that ready-made scapegoats are much easier to attack than issues like poverty or cycles of illiteracy, it should not be surprising that sound-byte culture has taken the stance that teachers are to blame. It is slightly more frustrating that both big-tent political parties have taken this position to some extent by placing faith in high-stakes tests and business-centered competition rhetoric, but we are past the stage where we can look to any political party to speak out in the name of educators.


So it falls to educators to call "foul" and get the word out.


This is not going to be an easy task. The news is not going to cover it. The sunday morning talk shows don't have a place for an educator's voice (although they seem to always have seats for multimillionare businessmen), and the most powerful bully pulpits are reserved for talks about "filling in ovals completely and dark" as the pathway to educational heights of performance ecstasy.


So let's take the arguments one at a time. Blog, write, advocate through social media, and begin to change the conversation around at the grass roots level. Because, and this may be important: teachers, as a group, know how to educate children. We know what works and what doesn't. We know how to fix problems that happen. We know what bad teaching looks like and, in general, call it out to administrators.


We care about our students. We care about them even when they frustrate us. We care about learning. We care about it in spite of all of the barricades that the Federal and State governments and their puppet masters the book publishers and large corporations put in our way. 


On Fewer Teachers -- The Premise


The latest attack that is gaining traction in the political discourse claims that we need fewer teachers. The claim seems to be taking a few different forms and is based on the generalizing "well everyone know that..." down-home rhetoric that appeals to people who will only consider a sound-byte and not dig deeper. Eventually we need to come up with a good counter-soundbyte, but until that time, I want to pick apart the argument a little.


New Hampshire Governor, John Sununu, seems to be one of the many voices spearheading this argumentation. The mass appeal whips up fervor over smaller government, fewer public employees, etc. Naturally, since many teachers are public employees, they fall into this group. What is astounding is the reasoning behind it:

There are municipalities, there are states where there is flight of population. And as the population goes down, you need fewer teachers...If there’s fewer kids in the classrooms, the taxpayers really do want to hear there will be fewer teachers. [...] You have a lot of places where that is happening. You have a very mobile country now where things are changing. You have cities in this country in which the school population peaked ten, 15 years ago. And, yet the number of teachers that may have maintained has not changed. I think this is a real issue. And people ought to stop jumping on it as a gaffe and understand there’s wisdom in the comment.

ThinkProgress has the full article and includes video for those of you skittish about the bias of a liberal news source (of course, if you fall into that category, you have probably already stopped reading, which is part of the confirmation-bias issues that we need to address in our #digcit classes with the next generation).

 So, let's break down the Sununu quote, acknowledging that he may have deeper analysis that did not come out in this interview, but holding him accountable as a taxpayer making public statements to a wide audience:

Population is going down: His first argument is one of simple arithmetic. If we need X number of teacher per Y number of students. When the number of students goes down, the number of teachers should go down. -- Its so simple that absolutely no one could disagree, right? There are a few problems with the premise of the claim though:

Attempting to Teach Digital Citizens about PLNs, Teaching the (non)Controversy part III

This was originally going to be a blog about how kids communicate based on my reflections of the last two weeks of the #BYOTchat (Thursdays 9pm...where all the cool educators hangout).

I was going to talk about the increase in students using twitter over facebook. How a huge factor in this seems to be the adoption of facebook by the students' parents. This was going to branch into a decision making matrix about distinguishing when we are trying to reach out to kids (in which case, be where they are) from when we are teaching kids to be attentive to their communications responsibilities (in which case, set the expectation and don't coddle). I would have concluded with some tangent about developing social media policies for schools that respects the privacy of teachers but encourages interaction with students.

This will not be that blog. Instead...

Teaching the (non)Controversy, Revisited

Note: this is part three, but can be read without the other two. Of course, if you want the whole picture...

In part one of Teaching the Controversy, I discussed the big picture idea of how our modern system with infowhelm and a dissolution of the forces that shape the Marketplace of Ideas is making it more difficult to determine truth and accurate information.

In part two, we analyzed how this impacts today's students and how creating assignments which embrace controversy might help us build the tools of critical analysis and discernment in students that a) they lack and b) desperately need.

I thought that would probably be the end of the discussion (for the time being).

[Interlude One]

One of the assignments I give in the last month of the #digcit class is a weekly analysis of a technology article. This analysis serves two functions: first, it allows students some exposure to current trends in technology that interests them. Second, students are challenged to identify a claim made by the article and analyze the evidence (or lack thereof) given to prove the claim.

.02% is really small

One of my students chose Twitter's response to the leaked twitter passwords picked up by a number of news agencies last week. In his summary, he challenged the claim that "it was not a big deal" because out of 60,000 leaked passwords, 20,000 were duplicates. He pointed out that twitter was concerned with 20-30,000 accounts when they should actually be worried about 40,000.

In the class discussion, we were able to use this example to point out a few things:

1. The source article that was cited was not very well written. It skipped a lot of information from the original Twitter talking points. (note: you would only know this if you did some digging).
2. In terms of significance, the difference between 20,000 accounts and 60,000 accounts when there are 140 million active users, is probably not enough to sway an opinion change one way or another.

At that point, another student asked why I was critical of the information from the article...enough so that I went digging for the full statement. The answer, surprised even me: "They [the writers on that particular site] are not the best journalists -- I only use that site for product reviews...so i just assumed something was off"

[End Interlude]

Think of these levels of information analysis nuance that have to be taught to understand this:

• Don't believe everything you read at face value -
  We teach that. Check
• Even if that source is credible by every measure you have been taught -
  Check? (said with hesitation)
• Understand that an expert in one sub-section of a topic might not be an expert in another -
  hmm. we don't teach that as much
• Evaluate all the facts from multiple sources from different points of view to determine the significance of the problem -- go beyond just the ability to explain the situation -
  That is getting really nit-picky. These are freshman. There are only so many hours in the day...

The New Authoritative Source: Personal Learning Network

At this point, I went into full-on Jesuit educator mode and asked the students to put away their phones and do some reflection (this is common practice, so they did it with a minimum amount of eye-rolling):

• What are the three sources of information that you rely on most?
• What are the next 5 sources of information that you use? (can you name eight sources of trusted information? my students struggled)
• What are the distinguishing characteristics that makes you put something or someone in your top 3, not your next 5?

After a few minutes we began to discuss. Some quick hit answers:
"I don't think that I have that many"
"I don't know why I trust them. I just do"
"I think it is because they say some things that I already know is true, so I believe other things"
"I like them"

At this juncture, I gave them the term "Personal Learning Network". For the purposes of the discussion, I am thinking of a PLN as any source that you believe prima facie (at first glance) unless proven otherwise -- A trusted person, agency, source.

One student volunteered to be our class case study. He explained that his most trusted source was trusted in large part because he felt they spoke about things that he felt strongly were true (similar worldview). He contrasted it with other competing sources that he felt were very biased. When pressed, he acknowledged that this bias was not scientifically determined, but a general feeling of unfairness that was confirmed by others.

If our most trusted sources are chosen in part, because they reinforce the ideas that we already have and we are likely to suspect data that comes from a source outside of our PLN, particularly if they have a different worldview, then how hard is it to change our minds about something we feel strongly about?

"It would be very difficult", our case-study student responded.
"They will just keep telling you things you want to hear."
"It would be impossible. How could you do it at all?"

It's Baaaack...

[Interlude Two]

Student 1: Is that why there are still people who believe the Earth is flat?

Teacher: Can your prove otherwise? I can only think of one way and I don't have an eclipse handy.

Student 2: It's what we were taught. There is something about the Coriolis effect.

Student 3: Well, most of us know it because we learned it in school. So teachers are part of our PLN?

Student 4: Do all teachers have to be a part of your PLN? As a group? Or do we pick and choose?

[End Interlude]

Human Development, Learning Networks, and Infowhelm

If you have read the previous two posts, I won't bore you by going into details. We had a robust discussion about how we live in a world that is set up to force their to be two sides to everything, even when it is really unnecessary, and how that becomes the source of fact for particular worldviews. From there:

The thoughts and feelings that help shape our
PLN may happen when we are very young

• We talked about how the sources we choose to trust come from thoughts and feelings that may be developed before we even know what research or bias is.
• We talked about distinguishing fact from opinion.
• We talked some more about distorting facts and pseudo-controversies.
• We talked about how most of the facts we know come to us second or third hand, from school, from our PLN, from Wikipedia.
• We talked about how boring and difficult Peer-Reviewed journals are to read, even if you can access them.

...and then the bell rang.

One of my students stalled as the others shuffled out the room, more thoughtful than usual on a Friday afternoon. "So what is the answer? How do we solve this problem?"

• I thought the answer could have something to do with an awareness of self - how we filter information and the blinders that we put on as part of human nature's way of dealing with the chaos of input.
• I thought the answer might lie partly in making the conscious choice to include people in our PLN whom we respected but with whom we often disagreed.
• I thought the answer definitely entailed developing new skills that included critical reading and rapid/regular crosschecking of facts.

"I don't know," I said, "but I think the topic is an important one, particularly as more and more information is thrown at you on a daily basis.

"You should teach this to the class next year"

Indeed. We all should.