What is bias?

bi·as/ˈbīəs/ Noun       Prejudice in favor or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.

Jeff Utecht at the Thinking Stick has presented a series of lessons on evaluating web resources. These are wonderful sets of plans (worthy of a good librarian). In the 3rd-5th grade lesson, he asks:

How do we know if we can trust a site?

There are a couple of key pieces of information that will help us decide if we can trust a site or not. Each of us needs to make up our minds if we can trust the site, in the end it’s a judgement call on the user’s part. But these key pieces of information can help us.

Authority

Currency

Content/Purpose

Audience

Structure/Workability

While I am not quite sure what "Stucture/Workabiity" means, I like the other criteria. I would only add "Evidence of bias" - which, to be fair, may be inferred by purpose and audience. 

Librarians have struggled with morphing from information evaluators to teachers of information evaluation for a number of years. I am delighted to see Jeff encouraging teachers to assume this role as well. Quite frankly, it's about time that classroom teacher help kids do a little website (or any medium) crap detection. Classroom teachers are neo-librarians in 21st Century classrooms - they just don't know it yet.

In a 2001 article for Creative Classroom, Survival Skills for the Information Jungle, I also suggested that website evaluation is critical and gave a few simple criteria:

Information jungle survival skill 3: Learn to tell the good berries from the bad berries.
Joey Rogers, Executive Director of the Urban Library Council, observes that libraries should have two large signs in them. The first hanging over the stacks that reads “Carefully selected by trained professionals” and the other hanging over the Internet terminals that reads “Whatever.”

Even very young students can and should be learning to tell the bad information berries from the good ones. Since junior high students often make websites that often look better than those of college professors, we teach students to look:

For the same information from multiple sources.

At the age of the page.

At the credentials of the author.

For unstated bias by the page author or sponsor.

Bias is only telling one side of a story. Both the Sierra Club and Exxon may have perfectly accurate information on their websites or other media releases about oil drilling and its impact on the environment, but they are both selective about the "truths" they choose to share or emphasize. Those who view information need to ask, "What's in it for the one doing the communicating if the information is understood (and believed)?

In case you haven't noticed, it's campaign season in the U.S. I can't think of a better time to teach bias - shown by both sides of the political spectrum.

Is over-blocking a result of over-responsibility?

Scott McLeod shared a rather expected reaction to his  purposefully divisive 26 Internet Safety Talking Points. A technology director lamented:

This is just sad that you’re setting up this adversarial relationship between administrators and IT with the tone of your letter here and if you think that’s going to help the situation by getting IT departments angry, because that’s what this article will do. 

The 26 Internet Talking Points were pretty tough on IT directors. And while we need dope slapping fairly regularly, Scott needs to hold other educators responsible for allowing over filtering to happen as well. The issue of filtering is a dilemma, not a problem, and its management will be ongoing.

In an nearly ten-year-old article, a Good Policy for Policies, I wrote:

For some reason, many schools have not yet figured out how to create good policies and rules about technology use .... Under the worst circumstances poor or non-existent policies have created what seems like a new range war between not cattle ranchers and sheep herders, but between educators (too often librarians) and the technologists. Judging from what I hear, it sounds like the techies are winning by default since they have, as one librarian puts it, the know-how to check “the little box.” [on the Internet filter]. Knowledge of what is possible and not possible with technological devices combined with a carefully selected sharing of that knowledge gives techies power and credibility, and makes rules they would like to set difficult to dispute.

Add to this a great deal of misunderstanding (and simply bullshit) about CIPA, and the dilemma seems to be getting worse, not better. Yet how many schools have tried my simple, but effective, means of managing the situation?

So who in a school should ultimately make the technology rules? In our district, these decisions are made by our district technology advisory committee, the same folks that make lots of technology planning and budget decisions. This committee is comprised primarily of educators - teachers, media specialists, and administrators - but also includes parents, students, businesspersons, college faculty members, and public librarians. And of course the committee includes our technical staff for their important input on security, compatibility and implementation issues. And we DO listen to everyone. Building technology committees should work in exactly the same way.

This has worked well for us. On the difficult filtering issue, the committee decided that as a result of CIPA, we would install a filter, but it would be set at its least restrictive setting. Any teacher or librarian can have a blocked site be unblocked by simply requesting it – no questions asked. Adults are required to continue to monitor student access to the Internet as if no filter were present. The technicians now know that it is the responsibility of the teaching staff to see that students do not access inappropriate materials, not theirs. This is a good policy decision that could not have been reached without a variety of voices heard during its making.

A big reason, I fear, that IT directors overblock is because they are made to feel like any trouble staff or students get into online could and should have been prevented by technology itself. Oh, were such a solution possible. This is like holding the school's safety director responsible for any playground accidents that might occur. 

So, who takes the lead on setting up a mechanism for collaborative decision-making regarding technology policy making? I'd think every tech director to save his or her own skin would be clamoring for such a process. But ultimately, since filtering tends to be done a district, not building level, the initiative needs come from the superintendent.

Scott, your frustration with both educators and IT folks is evident in your 26 points. You wrote that I influenced your thinking on the filtering issues. I hope I continue to do so, if you hear my suggestion of a collaborative work environment that disenfranchises and alienates neither educators or technologists. 

Image source

Indispensable Librarian, 2nd edition update

A friend found this and passed it on:

Always exciting to see something like this after so many months and so much work.

Oh, the author does NOT set the price.