Spoof websites - still a good tool?
Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 05:55AM The Information Jungle
Research for most of us who finished our formal education prior to 1995 operated in an Information Desert. Those five or ten sources required for a research paper were tough to find in our school and public libraries. The final product of our information quest was usually a written compilation of information, often verging on plagiarism to fulfill an assignment that neither requested nor encouraged the creation of new knowledge or innovative solutions to real problems.
Today’s student who has access to online sources of information operates in an Information Jungle. A quick search using an Internet search engine can yield thousands of possible sources of information. Savvy teachers today are asking students not just find and organize information, but to do so to answer genuine questions, offer original solutions to problems, and communicate their findings using a variety of media.
While technology can be enriching, the Information Jungle and projects that call for the demonstration of higher level thinking skills contain perils as well. The role of the teacher and library media specialist has rapidly changed from one of a desert guide (helping learners locate scarce resources) to one of jungle guide (helping learners evaluate and select resources of value). This change has been so rapid that many educators have not had time to learn the skills necessary for their new roles. But for those who do, the rewards for doing information problem solving in the Information Jungle can be tremendous. Survival Skills for the Information Jungle: Information Problem-Solving Activities Are More Important Than Ever Creative Classroom August 2001
Many people first heard about Mankato, MN, because of a website designed by Don Descy, a library professor at the local state university.* Don's Mankato site has been used by probably thousands of teachers as a humorous object lesson in why one should always check the veracity of information found on the web. I was honored to play Sheik Yabouti, visiting professor, at Mandota University on the site, wearing the garb I'd collected during my stay in Saudi Arabia.
Spoof websites have long been a staple of Internet instruction as all of us learned both the benefits and perils of the Internet. I always thought these were among the best. (And am surprised to see them all up and running!)
- California’s Velcro Crop Under Challenge http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html
- Feline Reactions to Bearded Men http://www.improb.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html
- Mankato MN Homepage http://city-mankato.us
- Dihydrogen Monoxide http://www.dhmo.org/
- Clones-R-Us http://www.d-b.net/dti/
- Northwest Tree Octopus http://www.zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
- First Male Pregnancy http://www.malepregnancy.com/
- National Motor Vehicle License Bureau http://www.license.shorturl.com/
Accuracy, reliability and bias are still things we all need to consider any time we use information - online or off. But it seems the ability to do this has become more difficult, not less, since 1995. Bias, often economically or politically driven, is more subtle, more accepted it seems. Stephen Colbert's Truthiness isn't parody - it's reality.
While spoof sites may be appropriate for younger students in demonstrating the need for skepticism about online information, I'd suggest that sites with a less apparent bias be used with older kids. Global warming sites and their critics, perhaps?
* The site was hated by the local Chamber of Commerce and legend has it that the occasional tourist showed up looking for the hot springs and pyramids back in the 90s.
Reader Comments (10)
I had fun using spoof websites at the high school level, as did the kids. Even more fun was having people register for accounts and start creating or editing Wikipedia pages. That's what really brought the message home about the need to evaluate what you find--when you realize that some 15 year old like you could have just edited a website that you're using as a source. So no, I wouldn't use spoof websites now, except maybe DHMO because it's so well done. I'd show them content farms. I'd show them crystalinks.com and explain why her site comes up on the top page for Google searches for Maya Indians. It's not that her content is bad, but it isn't original (once we took a phrase from one of her articles and saw how many other websites used the same phrase, then we tracked the original phrase back to a USGS article) and she's a psychic, so where's her authority in writing about the Maya? (Quote from her website: "our reality is a consciousness hologram set in linear time to experience emotions." Duh?)
I also don't rely on spoof sites when I work with students (mostly ninth graders) on website evaluation. I use pairs of sites and ask students to choose the site that is more reliable for research; I use sites that past students have actually used for research projects and that are clearly inadequate. I do one activity that asks kids to evaluate a variety of websites for a particular purpose. By the time kids are in high school they have already seen the tree octopus, etc. They know that they wouldn't turn up these sites when searching for something. But it's harder for them to reject a site (like crystallinks.com!) because it doesn't meet a standard for quality. So that's what I focus on.
Good points as usual.
The use of these spoof sites are a great starting point for introducing the concept. The fact that the content is so inconsistent with our students' sensibilities, but that they still want to believe the authenticity of the site based on the layout or images they see, helps illustrate the point in not-so-subtle ways.
I was working on a project a couple years ago and seeking intermediate-aged student web resources in Technology and the Designed World. I was troubled by the pervasiveness of well-done, professional sites targeted toward young children that were clearly backed by business, lobbyist, or activist interests. While educational in their overall nature, these sites were still quite biased and deliberate in presenting a particular perspective on an issue. This was especially true of environmentally oriented content.
In an place where there isn't an inherent expectation of bias, our students and teachers have to even more attentive to validity.
Hi Jude,
This is a great comment that demonstrates why librarians can and be the information experts even with the Internet available. Would all of our profession have your knowledge and abilities! Write an article on this (or a guest Blue Skunk post!)
Thanks,
Doug
Hi Chad,
The bias (not presenting ALL the facts) in business and other sites to me is the most insidious form of deception we can train kids to watch for. I always want to know both or all sides of an issue and kids should too. Maybe this is why there is a movement to get rid of school libraries? A conspiracy by those harmed by full disclosure?
Doug
I agree that spoofs are a great jumping off point, but then it's important to follow up with legit examples. I've used martinlutherking-dot-org with my students. I can't speak for others of course, but the infomaniacs I work with have been taught to look at site domains as part of their evaluative process. For some, this means automatically labeling sites that end with .org as being a "good" source. This site, which is actually a REAL website, created by white supremacists, can be useful -- when accompanied by instruction --- as powerful example of biased content.
As always, thanks for sparking good discussion.
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer,
You are absolutely right. I don't believe there is ever a single reliable measure of a site's trustworthness. And I doubt just about everybody (except my wife of course.)
Thanks for the comment,
Doug
Really what we're talking about here is media literacy, and that should be the cornerstone of any worthwhile education. Evaluating websites and uncovering their bias is one of the most significant skills we can teach our youngsters. "Back in the day," books had to be vetted through a publisher who probably got the author through an agent. The work went through several revisions, proofreaders, editors, fact-checkers, etc. before it ever saw the light of day. Not to say that all books are reliable, but the ease of creating "content" online is unparalleled, and to a 15 year old kid, Wikipedia is equivalent to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Hi J,
I've always found "media literacy" a little vague, preferring information literacy, but they are all inter-related.
Oh, the independent studies tend to show that EB and Wikipedia are equivalent for accuracy - and of course Wikipedia is so much broader in scope. I've always though Wikipedia is a great tool for teaching bias via the discussions section of the entries.
Thanks as always for your insightful comment,
Doug
I'm late jumping into this due to technical difficulties - but I thought others might make use of this idea.
I've planned a lesson but not used it as yet. The lesson has grouped sets of three websites. In each set one is blatantly a spoof (though I know some unsophisticated kids won't catch on); another site is "average" - typically with a strong bias or a commercial purpose; and another that meets the criteria required by the web evaluation checklist that we use. The lesson can be located at: Real or Hoax
Hi Jacquie,
Thanks for sharing this lesson. (Looks like a good article for LMC!)
Doug