I sure hope no one is still teaching information literacy and/or research skills with "you can trust sites with .gov" addresses because you sure as hell cannot.
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The “you can trust sites with .gov” showed how little we understood/believed about the connection between misinformation and power. Even tho we’d simultaneously teach literature illustrating the fucked-up ness that can come from this very relationship…
I see your point and I think it depends on the perspective from which the sites were/are viewed. I agree, tho, that currently a wider variety of perspectives share this sentiment.
Oh, they are still teaching that in places, I'm sure. I stopped teaching .gov as reliable in 2016 & never went back. Lateral reading hasn't failed me yet, in my own practice or my instruction. #TLSkyChat
I had this happen with a group of high school students last month & we talked about using other sources other than .gov sites right now… #TLSkyChat #AASLSLM
It makes me so upset*. Even the post Patriot Act stuff, where we were hiding govt docs and smuggling home govt datasets on CD was not as disinfo as this.
I’m teaching data science and I described final projects last week. It was minutes before class that it occurred to me to rethink the data set repository list.
Wow... That hadn't even occurred to me and now I'm two days away from going back. In the library. With a plan so begin research methods and sources. But wow, when I know how true and still have to do...
Having lived through Watergate as a young teen, I never taught “trust .gov.” Governments are large, complicated machines composed of people who make mistakes, sometimes honestly, sometimes intentionally in an effort to deceive. Verify always.
I got a lot of great responses to this post yesterday and just want to plug one of the best info lit books I've read and that is written for and accessible to young people. It's Seeman Yasmin's WHAT THE FACT?
If you do audiobooks, it's fantastic in that format, too.
Filling out the request for purchase form for my local library now. Even if you purchase a copy, please do this to make it accessible to your neighbors as well as as telling your library system that this is information people want.❤️
Where I am, it was only some .gov websites pertaining to some topics that were taught as trustworthy, but then again I'm not in America. The other that apparently some places still teach is that .org websites are trustworthy, which isn't always the case.
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If you do audiobooks, it's fantastic in that format, too.