Bad News

Not all scientific studies are created equal - David H. "A popular study from the 1970s that helps sell millions of dollars' worth of fish oil supplements worldwide is deeply flawed, according to a new study being published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. The original study, by Danish physicians H.O. Bang and D.J. Dyerburg, claimed Inuit in Greenland had low rates of heart disease because of their diet, which is rich in fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids from eating fish and blubber from whales and seals." But there's more! PISA’s warning: teachers need to teach Information Literacy explicitly if we are to reverse the decline – Information Literacy Spaces On December 03rd 2019, Stuff news reported on the results of the 2018 round of the OECD’s PISA(1) testing in Reading Literacy, Mathematics Literacy and Science Literacy(2). The article noted the consistent downward trends in achievement, since 2012, of New Zealand 15 year olds in these three ‘curriculum’ areas. I want to concentrate on Reading Literacy. In 2018, students were selected from subject English classrooms to complete the PISA test, and the subsequent analysis then refers to English classrooms, teachers and their practice. My assumption therefore was that the ‘literacy’ test would focus on the conventional skills of comprehending and explaining the language and literary features of texts – that comprehension meant understanding what the texts were about at surface and deeper levels.

Hillary’s weird eyeballs (Before It's News) This morning’s Drudge Report has a weird pic of Hillary Clinton above the featured story of Hillary Clinton’s appearance on last night’s ABC Jimmy Kimmel late-night talk show. Here’s a screenshot I took of Drudge: Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel, Hillary promised that, barring any national security risk, if elected president she would open to the public the government’s files on the mysterious Area 51 in the Nevadan desert. There have been persistent rumors that Area 51, a U.S. Air Force facility the existence of which has only recently be acknowledged by the government, is the site of an UFO crash in the mid-1950s. YALSA Teen Literacies Toolkit Download the print version (PDF) or view the web version. Created by the Literacies Toolkit Resource Retreat Participants August 2017 About the Kit In this toolkit, we use the “fake news” phenomenon as an approach to addressing multiple literacies. We re-examine and discuss culturally-inclusive literacies strategies library staff can use with teens to help them make sense of their world and build a robust set of skills as they prepare to enter college or start careers. YALSA would like to thank Hailley Fargo, Kristin Fontichiaro, Jennifer Luetkemeyer, Trent McLees, Renee McGrath, Allison Renner, and Julie Stivers for participating in the creation of this toolkit.

How to recognize fake news on Facebook If you’ve been looking at Facebook lately, you may have seen that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, a town in Texas was quarantined due to a deadly disease and Germany just approved child marriage. To be clear, none of these events really happened ― but that didn’t stop news of them from spreading like a virus. Fake news articles ― especially throughout this election year ― have increasingly become a fixture on social media. How to Spot Fake News: Lesson Plan for Grades 9-12 Concerns about the proliferation of "fake news" on social media surfaced as early as 2014 as adults and students increased their use of social media platforms for gaining information about current events. This lesson asks students to think critically by analyzing a news story and satire of the same event in order to explore how each can lead to different interpretation. Estimated Time: Two 45-minute class periods (extension assignments if desired) Activity #1: News Article: Facebook's Satire Tag Background Knowledge:

#Lockdownlibrarianship — Library Whisperers The covid19 pandemic is bringing out the best and the worst in people. Understandably, we are seeing the rational and the irrational clash. In an unfolding global crisis that mixes life and death decisions of human health, politics, science and opinion in a fluid negotiation, social media is turbocharging both the distribution of facts and myth. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, disease feeds fear and the messages of the unscrupulous or naive can fuel panic, mistrust and danger.

A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science Click to enlarge A brief detour from chemistry, branching out into science in general today. This graphic looks at the different factors that can contribute towards ‘bad’ science – it was inspired by the research I carried out for the recent aluminium chlorohydrate graphic, where many articles linked the compound to causing breast cancer, referencing scientific research which drew questionable conclusions from their results. Contrary to common belief, randomised controlled trials inevitably produce biased results Much of the social and medical sciences depend on randomised control trials. But while this may be considered the foundational experimental method, a certain degree of bias inevitably arises in any trial; whether this is sample bias, selection bias, or measurement bias. This is important as the level of validity of a trial’s causal claims can be a matter of life or death.

A Rough Guide to Types of Scientific Evidence Click to enlarge Today’s graphic looks at science in general, rather than just chemistry. It’s in a similar vein to the Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science posted last year, but this time looking at the hierarchy of different types of scientific evidence. An Engaging Word Game Helps Students Grasp Implicit Bias As part of an effort to demonstrate the effect of implicit bias, library media specialist Jacquelyn Whiting devised an exercise that looks similar to “Mad Libs,” the popular fill-in-the-blank word game. In EdSurge’s “Everyone Has Invisible Bias. This Lesson Shows Students How to Recognize It,” Whiting describes how she removed words from a New York Times opinion essay to create a new, highly engaging activity for a 10th-grade class.

Five Editor-Approved Tips for Media Literacy in Any Class In 2015, a year before murmurs of “fake news” became omnipresent, textbook publisher McGraw-Hill was under fire for a World Geography book illustration. The section, on patterns of immigration throughout American history, referred to a wave of “immigration” in which African “workers” arrived in the United States. Parents, students and teachers were outraged by the sugarcoated and outright false history of slavery being shared in classrooms across Texas.

Is this study legit? 5 questions to ask when reading news stories of medical research Who doesn’t want to know if drinking that second or third cup of coffee a day will improve your memory, or if sleeping too much increases your risk of a heart attack? We’re invested in staying healthy and many of us are interested in reading about new research findings to help us make sense of our lifestyle choices. But not all research is equal, and not every research finding should be interpreted in the same way. Nor do all media headlines reflect what was actually studied or found. So how can you tell?

Civic Online Reasoning If young people are not prepared to critically evaluate the information that bombards them online, they are apt to be duped by false claims and misleading arguments. To help teachers address these critical skills, we’ve developed assessments of civic online reasoning—the ability to judge the credibility of digital information about social and political issues. These assessments ask students to reason about online content. We’ve designed paper-and-pencil tasks as well as tasks that students complete online. These assessments are intended for flexible classroom use. We hope teachers use the tasks to design classroom activities, as the basis for discussions about digital content, and as formative assessments to learn more about students’ progress as they learn to evaluate online information.