#where did media literacy and basic common sense go

[letsgobarbs]

Heyyyy. Heard a lot of murmurs about how my “clique” started the AI witch hunt. And I stand by what I did. Something tells me that if a white woman had done what we did, they would be hailed the fandom hero. But I digress.

Since many of you seem uninformed, it was this post that introduced us to an AI scanner. There are many like it, there’s this one too. AI scanners utilise AI Technology— analytical AI to be specific. However, it is still considered to be a new and unreliable technology. Why wouldn’t it be? Gen AI itself is a new and unreliable technology. How would any scanner be able to track something that is unreliable and unpredictable itself. There were two blogs who were pointed at for blatantly only posting AI fics— one of them posted 148+ fics in a month, and another that posted over 20 in a week. This was pretty telling, since it is humanly impossible to do. Moreover, they were checked through both scanners linked above.

Now, anybody with rudimentary knowledge of AI would know that AI models need to be trained. Hence, to put out a fic it needs to be fed works written by other authors. THIS IS STEALING. And it is also why many AI-written fics are getting harder to spot, because far too many fics have been fed into models to train them that AI is generating work anybody else could have written at first glance. Many authors, most notably auteurdelabre, have left since their work has been fed into AI and essentially stolen from them.

There were mutiple people who’s fics came out to be over 60%, 70% and even 80% but we had the good sense to not be the fucking fic police— the AI cops, if you will. Because there was always a possibility that the author had their work stolen from them. This could not have been true for the 2 blogs we pointed out because it was a) an open secret that they were using AI and b) too new to the fandom to gain any traction and have their work stolen from them.

Now… my question is— why call it a “witch hunt”?

Which other witches have we hunted? We are here to have fun in a fandom just like everybody else and have no reason to dedicate our time and energy into policing other people. Just a few weeks ago people were moaning about how the surge in AI fics was making the fandom more hostile and ruining it for everybody. So why are we the villains for calling it like we see it??

Even if it was a witch hunt, you shouldn’t be afraid if you’re not using AI??? Isn’t this the same cop logic y’all use? The easiest way to prove that you did not use AI was to say ‘I didn’t use it’— maybe even show the document history of you building your fics brick by brick, word by word, over the course of weeks and months. You know what I think? I think the people using AI are now scared that their work will be checked and called out. Hence, the strong sentiments on the “witch hunt”.

As for @/gothcsz, Kat’s fics were always going to show a high percentage of AI because anybody who has followed her for a hot second would know that she too had her work stolen, scrapped and used to train AI. The people accusing her of using AI lacked that fundamental, basic knowledge of this technology. Please read up on it.

But several people ran with it— gleefully, and so very excited to see the downfall of a talented BIPOC author. And they ran to both @toxicanonimity and @ihateconfessionalblogs. They titled this turn of events as “What Goes Around, Comes Around” when really this was a case of “We Will Accuse You Of Stealing What Was Stolen From You Because We Lack Basic Tech And Media Literacy.”

Nowhere in our initial posts about AI did we hail AI scanners as foolproof— it’s common knowledge and information they are not. Moreover, none of those 2 girls would have been called out if they hadn’t performed the tried and true method of shedding white woman tears. Here’s my original post, where you can see the AI user wail about how she is most definitely not using AI and people should come off of anon to converse with her— which I did. Mind you, I previously tried to DM her, which wasn’t possible because she had restricted her messages to only those she follows. And I had also tried to comment on her post but comments and replies were restricted at the time. I thought this was very funny, and would do it again.

I have many thoughts on @toxicanonimity’s engagement with the confessions blog and the shit-stirring blog @ihateconfessionalblogs. But I will hold my peace, because I do believe that the moment you start arguing with ignorant fools, you have lost. I hope this post serves as an accurate account of what has happened as well as being informative.

[bedforddanes75]

when will people learn that songs can be interpreted AND have set meanings at the same time

[bimbolita]

I’m so glad everyone is having the same visceral reaction to episode 4 like I did. I thought I was being too sensitive but fucking no. It is painful. It is horrid. Knowing that this type of abuse actively happens to sex workers and those who are trafficked. It’s jarring because I didn’t expect to see this dark and explicit depiction in a cartoon that jokes about penises every 2 minutes. It’s like when light hearted coco melon shows start talking about death, it was just unexpected because I never took this show serious. I’m going to share more of my thoughts below! Trigger Warning: Mentions of SA ⚠️

I don’t think it’s my place to deny or confirm if the ‘poison’ scenes were fetishized, I personally believe it’s subjective. I know how I feel but I think no matter where you stand, you are right in your own way. Many things can be true at once. What we can all agree on, is that it was harsh. In a way, I hope the audience is able to understand how exploiting and non glamorous sex work is. There is nothing fun about having your body used multiple times a day by people you do not know and having said scenes recorded then plastered all over the media. Of course all forms of engaging in or creating adult content are different, I am specifically talking about sex workers who have no say or control over their bodies and finances. Like Angel. Let us put emphasis on WORK in sex work.

It is demanding. It is laborious It is scaring. Remember that and remember the unheard voices who must do this to simply survive.

There is a lot of criticism about angel’s personality and yes I agree it is annoying but you have to understand, it is a trauma response. Hypersexuality is a common trait among those who are sexually abused. Angel just outwardly expresses it all the time because it is all he knows. This thought process is the only way to tolerate his behavior. I say thought process because it is only an interpretation. It’s very obvious viv just adores writing sexed up characters with zero nuance or depth but let’s just pretend she can actually write male characters that think beyond their cock and balls. Let’s pretend that Angel Dust is a two dimensional character and not (grits teeth) fetish bait.

Now, let’s talk about Charlie. Alright great, she saw her friend being mistreated and was about to stand up to his abuser, ok good good. The victim (Angel) gets upset and wants her to leave because he was beaten. Yes, average response of someone who is an abusive relationship, he is afraid and wants to avoid more conflict between him and Val. The situation at hand couldn’t be more than obvious. How does Charlie respond? She cries. And not because she is frustratedly concerned for the safety of her friend. It is because he yelled and rejected all her poor attempts at helping. Charlie is weak as shit and I think that interaction was weirdly written. I wish she had the mental fortitude to understand how much danger Angel’s life was in at that moment. I cannot enjoy her ‘aggressive kindness’ cutie do no wrong baby girl type of character in a moment like that.

And I feel the same about Husk’s song. Out of all the responses you could’ve made, this is what made it to the final cut? Do better. I don’t care if I lack the mEdIa LiTeRaCy twitter keeps yapping about. It’s bad. You just showed a sexual assault montage and the rebuttal was basically “my uncle broke his neck tap dancing once :/“ lol we’re both losers and that’s ok, suck it up buttercup, I like you regardless. This was the best response to an SA victim? No degree in media literacy would ever help me think that was an acceptable response. I dunno about ya’ll but I major in common sense at the university of using my eyes and fucking ears. Now imagine, if that entire segment, when Husk and Angel are at the bar plus the musical number; imagine if all of that was placed BEFORE we see Angel and Val interact and then poison plays as the final song. It would be 10x more impactful because then the audience sees how deep and stuck Angel actually is. Trauma olympics is never acceptable but neither is trauma participation trophies. It is not right to make Husk’s issues be seen as the same as Angel’s issues. They are not the same and it is ok to acknowledge that Angel has it worst than Husk. It’d be more genuine if Husk were to just hug him in complete silence after dragging him out of the bar and have Angel tearfully embrace him back. The first non sexual and benevolent interaction between them. The first physical act of care with no ulterior motives of lust.

I grind my teeth at the wasted potential.

[serviceable-mechanism]

Oh no you never learned how to argue :/

it seems like you’re getting irrationally upset so I’d advise you to calm down a little and try to see the conversation a little more clearly. Maybe check on your mother. As I previously clarified, I didn’t wear a condom the other night and I’m not sure if she’s hit menopause or not yet. Using basic media literacy skills that I learned in high school, I am easily able to tell the difference between a product simply stating where it was made, and one that focuses entirely on advertising its origin as a selling point. New York, notably, is not referred to as a Jewish holy land by anyone but the most insular and insufferable liberals, and my criticism of Israel was specifically from the lens of its relevance to the holiday in question. If you want to talk about colonial enterprise as a whole, that would require broadening the discussion. I think the existence of the British monarchy is also an affront to any belief in personal freedom or liberty. Happy? They’re just far less relevant to Pesach specifically

Ultimately, I feel like you’re ignoring the actual things I’m saying in favor of grasping at a vague sense of personal outrage. “Lmao even” Yes quite but I’ve yet to see anything you have said actually… contradict the statement. You may be laboring under the common playground belief that conservatism ends at the American Republican political party. If this is the case please let me know and I’d be happy to pick up where your primary education seemed to tragically fail you

It seems as though you are attempting to pick and choose between seeing our traditions as literal Christian gospel, and uncertain metaphor. As a bit of friendly advice, you’d be able to argue better if you chose one side over the other. Whether it’s an actual divine entity, or the vague and ultimately meaningless force of “tradition” you are still arguing without an argument. Believing that things must be a certain way because of historical precedent is probably an even more conservative stance than saying so because you heard a voice from above. Neither position is worthy of respect. Policies should be enacted if they will lead to greater degrees of human prosperity. Whatever you choose to call your justification otherwise, faith or forefathers, it is worthless in the face of real people.

I think you may have misunderstood me again. Israel (that is to say, the Israel of our faith, not the one in reality) can be broadly interpreted to mean the community and freedom of Jews worldwide. I have yet to see any compelling argument as to why it should be an actually physical country with a seat on world councils. To be sat beside the greatest colonial powers of history. Do you truly think so little of our people that we cannot aspire to a better path than that?

I’m sorry but I did say “church” and I meant “church.” Judaism may not have them but Israel might as well. This is hardly an important point to make, but you don’t really see the current existing country of Israel as a real representation of Judaism, do you? The country primarily funded by Christian nations, that allows Christian business owners to speed through their “conversion” and exists specifically due to a Christian belief in the end of days starting with the collective death of the Jewish people. I thought we were trying to engage seriously

I don’t care how you grew up. It clearly wasn’t with Jewish values. Just Jewish trivia. And that’s such a shame. Though I will admit, you made me laugh so that’s one thing to be proud of.

“breAd (dumbass can't even spell???!)”

Genuinely. This was very funny. I promise, when you’re older you’ll get the joke. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think her and I should go for another round

As passover rolls around again this year, i think it's a good opportunity to examine the fascinating interaction between capitalism's neverending drive towards profit seeking, and a product specifically designed to be unpleasant and unappetizing

Passover, for the unaware, is a time when (particularly strong willed) practicing Jews abstain from risen bread and a fair variety of other grain-based foodstuffs, and eat matzah in their place, to commemorate the historical suffering of the Jewish people. As such, matzah itself, the bread of affliction, is specifically intended to be, more or less, pretty bullshit. It's hard and nearly flavorless and cold and boring and nothing at all like warm soft beautiful sourdough bread my beloved (may we be reunited soon). As a result, attempting to sell matzah puts advertisers in a difficult position, presented with the task of making this horrible bullshit (i like the soup, okay?) look like something one would choose to eat outside of the confines of religious tradition

To commemorate this holiday, I'd like to look at a few of the approaches they have taken

Manischewitz

Right off the bat, we've got the brand recognition to carry this one through, and to be honest that's largely all a good box of matzah should need, considering the 99% of the time it will be bought out of obligation. Often considered to be the "autism of religions" Judaism is a faith that celebrates the importance of tradition above all else, so Manischewitz is going to have an advantage from jump. That said, I find the phrase "perfect for Passover" to be particularly redundant in this context. If you're Jewish, it hardly needs to be said, and if you're not, well, please eat something that tastes good instead

7/10

2. Manischewitz (again)

Here's where we hit our first roadblock. In addition to the brand name being sized down, thus lessening the advantage granted by cultural cache, this particular product makes what I would consider to be a rookie mistake. Onion flavoring. That is, they attempted to make matzah taste good. While tempting, this is ultimately an error. It's not supposed to taste good. It was designed and perfected by our most talented artisans for three thousand years to be be the culinary equivalent of watching paint dry. It is absolute hubris to believe yourself capable of turning that into an appetizing snacking treat with the addition of a little bit of onion powder

4/10

3. Streit's

In general, this one is not particular offensive in any direct sense. It has bold, bright colors, and a clear image of the product. I feel that "thin and crispy" is a particularly unnecessary addition, as, yeah man I should sure hope they are, and the addition of (light) salt edges this just a little closer to attempting to taste good, but these are relatively minor complaints. My true issue with this is the assertion that this matzah is meant to "pair with soups, spreads, and salads." This is false advertising

5/10

4. Yehuda Matzos

On the surface this appears to be a relatively inoffensive example, but the longer one looks, the more the cracks begin to show. The images present give off a particularly sickly yellow quality that makes them just a tad less appetizing than they already would be, and the description of them as "Matzo-Style Squares" really sells the unsettling quality of this whole display. And they're also gluten free. Yes, I know some people have dietary restrictions, but as far as I'm aware, most people who are gluten free already don't eat all that much bread anyways, and with the helpful acknowledgment that this particular product is "not a replacement for matzo at the Seder" as in the one time where actually eating the stuff is part of suggested tradition, I fail to see a scenario in which these things are consumed. It also, obviously, loses points for the "Imported from Israel" banner in the lower corner, though I'll get into that in a moment

3/10

5. Holyland

There is basically just the one advertising strategy being employed here. It's subtle, but with a keen eye I'm sure you can figure it out. The natural issue, of course, is that it's an inherently polarizing one. It positions itself such that one's political alignment is the only deciding factor in the decision to purchase it, and without other appealing characteristics, this is ultimately a losing strategy.

Obliviously, the primary issues here would be the ongoing genocide and human rights abuses, but as that's largely out of the scope of this particular post, I'd like to focus on how inappropriate a pro-Israel message is when it comes to the celebration of Passover specifically. Ultimately, the story of Passover is that of Jewish escape from bondage and slavery, leading to a forty-year of wandering through the desert looking for a home. That is, it is a celebration of the history of the Jewish people specifically as a diaspora. As the period of Jewish chattel slavery in Egypt is considered apocryphal from a modern lens, one should approach the narrative not as an earnest recounting of true events, but as a metaphor for the Jewish condition as a whole. And from this framework we understand the forty years in the desert searching for a homeland not to be a specific literal stretch of history, but instead a collective journey that the Jewish people undertake, to escape antisemitism broadly. Considering how antisemitism is alive and well to this day, one must come to the obvious conclusion that this is a journey we are still in the middle of. In addition to the fact that ethnostates as a whole are an evil endeavor, the idea that Israel should exist at all, is, from a Jewish perspective, incredibly hubristic and antithetical to the message Passover means to instill in us.

0/10

6. Streit's (again)

To lighten the tone somewhat, here we have something almost passable. Passover matzah. That's what it's for, that's what it is. And with what appears to be a depiction of the bitter herbs meant to be consumed alongside the matzah during a traditional Passover seder, this branding subtly hints at the clear implication: you are eating this because of your traditions. No attempt is made to make the matzah itself look good, and I respect that. That said, I balk at the idea of purchasing an entire five pounds of the stuff, but that inherent revulsion is in conflict with my desire to find out what exactly the "Passover game" enclosed inside entails.

7/10

7. Yehuda Matzos

I hate this. No, I will grant you, matzah is not supposed to be good. You are meant to long for the taste of bread. You need to want it. But, at the same time, there's no need to make it taste worse than it already does. It may be the bread of affliction, but, like, maybe not too afflicted, and I really think that making it whole wheat ruins my last shred of enjoyment of the stuff. This one's also from Israel

3/10

8. Streit's (again)

Go fuck yourself.

0/10

9. Rakusen's of Yorkshire

There's really a lot to say with this one. From the completely superfluous "vegan" sticker in the lower left hand corner (they're flour and water), to the helpful description of these as "crackers." There is just such a monumentally small target audience for this. I'm sure the population of British Jews excited to celebrate the coronation of King Charles with a holiday snack...exists, I don't imagine they're particularly numerous. Also, doing some research, King Charles' coronation took place on the sixth of May, 2023, while Passover of that year took place between the fifth and thirteenth of April. What event could this possibly be appropriate at? Having them for the coronation itself would mean eating matzah outside of the timeframe in which it is specifically necessary to do so (untenable), and having them for Passover of that year means saving this box in your pantry for a month so you can get questioning and uncomfortable looks from your friends and relatives during the Seder. Additionally, I really can't tell if I think it's antisemitic or just pretty funny that they thought a possibility of winning money was one of the best ways to advertise matzah.

1/10

10. Streit's (once again)

Finally. Now, here is something to be celebrated. Note the helpful yellow ribbon in the lower right corner, and the glaringly prominent "UNSALTED" staring us in the face. No salt, no flavoring, no bells, no whistles. There is nothing here to differentiate this particular product from any other box of matzah, except the specific advertising flourishes being utilized. And what flourishes would those be, precisely? "For each box of this matzah that goes unsold, a woman will die of breast cancer. This will be on you." That's right. Sure, you can rely on creative flavoring, to mask the taste of bitter affliction. You can offer cash prizes, nationalist posturing, or an appeal to tradition. But only Streit's is out here advertising their matzah the right way. The Jewish way. With guilt.

Buy our matzah. If you don't, you're a bad person.

10/10

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Lygia Clark, "Óculos" ("Goggles"), 1968

* * * *

Joohn Choe

Did you know that half of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at the 8th-grade level?

It's a constraint on victory outcomes in counter-disinformation work; it's a problem when you declare war on things like QAnon or the Republican industrial lie complex.

It arises when you use a technique from military planners called "thinking backwards".

This doesn't mean "be old-school and nostalgic" (I mean, you'd think), it means "start from the outcome and work backwards".

Illiteracy turns out to be a problem when you consider the basic problem of active measures defense as an exercise in thinking backwards. You get new solutions and new problems; illiteracy, and being literate but not reading, or alliteracy (irritatingly not a word in spell-check), are some of those problems.

First, let's talk about the outcome.

The fundamental problem with disinformation studies is that you can't define what disinformation is unless you take a stance on what information is, and how it's used in society.

It's meaningless to point your finger and say "liar!" as we are wont to do in this field if you're not even clear on what role that should play in society, or how things are supposed to work normally. You can't diagnose a dysfunction in how society produces and consumes information if you don't even have a view on how it functions.

You need to have a defensible, testable theory of how America's information economy operates normally if you are going to put yourself forward as some authority on how it's functioning abnormally. You cannot be a counter-disinformation operator without being a philosopher, and to some extent, a systems theorist and, increasingly, I'd argue, an aestheticist (as in "studies aesthetics", not "aesthetician who does your nails").

This is incredibly basic. I still find it odd that even very professional people and companies in this field don't grapple with this issue. Even the data is meaningless, no matter how impressively objective it is, if you're lacking that kind of context; you end up having anomalies with no baseline, like an endless stream of singleton events.

That's no way to run a railroad, like the old saying goes.

So, back when I had a startup, with advisors, I talked to one of them who actually taught a class at Berkeley on startups about this crazy recording of a Federal crime I'd gotten in Alabama, and I asked for advice for what to do about it in terms of the fight against disinformation.

The answer he gave ended up being a lead-in to thinking about this in a systems-oriented, long-terms sustainable kind of way. I still come back to it as a recurrent point in shaping outcome scenarios.

He suggested, first off, in this sort of infuriatingly wise way that he has (he's an old Asian dude, so) that you have to ask, first: is zero percent really possible?

What kind of victory state are you after, if this is actually a lie that involves disinformation on the scale that you observe it?

He argued that you have to fit disinformation into a place with other aspects of how we talk to each other. On his account, there was potentially value in giving people the ability to create and pass on value in determining what was disinformation and what wasn't, and it verged into a discussion of a crypto-currency based anti-disinformation app that I ended up not really wanting to do.

Credit where credit is due, though: his argument about the achievability of zero percent disinformation made a lot of sense.

The outcome state we're after can't be "zero active measures" and "zero disinformation". Not only is that unrealistic, if you even did manage to achieve that, you'd have North Korea. They have no problem with differing versions of state truth and reality, because everything is state truth that excludes reality.

Diversity in viewpoints is one of our strengths as a country, too; reducing everything down to one version of truth, even as generous as the boundaries might be on that, would inevitably end up flattening society. Like, no one wants "information socialism", that just... sounds bad.

You could argue that disinformation is a flipside of a coin, actually. Disinformation is in a state of mutual entailment with socially accepted official truth; there can't be one without the other, in one way of looking at it. And that's what I think my advisor was getting at.

It's like that old cliché about "tHe sIgN fOr cRiSiS aNd ChAngE ArE tEh sAmE iN cHiNeSe" which is like, you understand, up there with Sun Tzu quotes and "your people are so hard-working!" as far as Things I Ain't 'Bout As An Asian Person, You Feel Me Though (the game show!).

And don't even get me started on people ripping off strategy ideas from theorists of Chinese stick-poking and rock-throwing warfare.

In a normal time, you could say that there's a balance between disinformation and truth, and truth is usually the winning side on that, because normally, the President and the ruling party aren't active sources of disinformation with the veneer of authority on it.

We're getting out of a period of time in which that balance was badly, badly disrupted on the side of disinformation. The kind of abnormalities we see as a society - from the Capitol insurrection to how weird people around us are, compared to what they were like in 2015 - those can all be seen as stemming from that state of imbalance.

The outcome, the advisor argued, was fundamentally about balance. Not about destroying disinformation, or striking it until it wasn't a problem; the paradigm was rebalancing, he argued.

Winning isn't reducing disinformation to zero. It's achieving a new balance between disinformation and truth where the boundary favors truth more.

Almost every victory state for "The War On Disinformation" boils down to that, actually.

If you see it as rebalancing, then new ways of achieving achieving victory by restoring balance open up.

For starters, you could add to the flow of information coming out; you could even make oppositional truth part of it. That's really what "fact-checking" is on social media - Politifact and LeadStories aren't "fact-checkers", because fact-checkers are people at media institutions who run quality control on news, and they are not that. They pick and choose what stories to oppose, at times seemingly arbitrarily, at times politically, and calling them "fact-checkers" hides the essentially subjective nature of that practice.

You could create personal truth, give people new ways to be, new role models to emulate and new social roles to fulfill - "offensive fact-checker", "Nazi-hunter", "deplatformer", and the like. And you could even amplify it and try to drown out the misleadingly framed truth, and the outright mistruths, coming out of the disinformation industry.

You could mobilize the truth to create political crises, and work to reset the boundary on allowable lies. This is the core methodology of an activist, it's creating strategic dilemmas for institutions based on public perception and the pressure to do the right thing.

Outcome-focused political activism, where you're trying to get a specific candidate elected or voted out of office, is one way of specifically mobilizing the truth, instead of just sitting on ass and feeling good about having it (this is common, I'd argue). We can not only reduce disinformation better - interdict it better, ban it better, find it better, track it better - we can also get better at producing alternative presentations and modes of appeal for truth.

The problem with all these solution scenarios, though, and the area that I see where we could really stand to improve, and maybe even something that I'd work on for a minute, is our culture.

I'd argue we just don't have the kind of intellectual culture that supports a lot of these solutions. We can't, not with fundamental adult literacy the way it is; not with the state of the public intellectual the way it is.

There was a point around 2015 when people were declaring a crisis of the French public intellectual tradition; since Henri-Levy, basically, Pierre Bourdieu if you count him, there just haven't been globally notable, famous French philosophers like there used to be. That traces to any number of factors with them, but a lot of them are factors we share, like the ever-wider spread of spectacular culture and its increasing efficacy at exploiting us, drawing us into addiction loops, even, with social media and "binge-watching" TV shows.

I'd argue that the best counter-disinformational solutions we have right now come down to art and aesthetics, actually, because we are so bad as a culture at reading.

Militarized truth, and grassroots truth, and offensive truth, are forms of rebalancing between disinformation and truth, yes, but it's a reactionary, almost frantic kind of truth. The jobs that it gives people, the roles that it puts people into - content moderator, offensive fact-checker - eat people up in the long run because they're in a race against disinformation, and disinformation keeps winning.

And it ends up repeating the basic problem of piling truth upon truth without mobilizing it, positioning it in a way to get through to people.

If it takes a pretty image and a witty notion to introject a critical idea into someone's head; if it takes a song and a dance, even, to get someone to have a bullshit filter... I say, do it.

Call it less "Art of War', more "War of Art".

---

Lygia Clark, "Óculos" ("Goggles"), 1968

https://www.politico.eu/.../decline-of-french.../

https://www.wyliecomm.com/.../whats-the-latest-u-s.../

[conneruvu-blog]

Last year I took English 1010 and to be completely honest I didn’t learn a single thing. We would write tons of essays on random topics that we were assigned to do and had no interest in. We would never talk about them or what we were working on. It was more of I am supposed to give you guys assignments so here is a bunch of random busy work. Oh, and by the way we won’t ever discuss anything about it. Also, it better be exactly how I want it if you want a good grade. Good luck with that. So yeah, I would say English 1010 did not help my writing skills or research literacy unfortunately.  

Then in high school, well it was high school, so I am sure that you know that not a whole lot of people take it all that serious. Then I didn’t write another essay or do any English related work for 3 years until taking my first English class in college. I didn’t even go in with high expectations, yet my expectations of what I would learn and do were not even close to being met. But hey sometimes that’s life for you and you just have to learn to roll with the punches and move on.  

When I came into this class the first day I was a little nervous. Nervous I would be way behind and not be at the same level that all the other students were in their English and writing skills. I thought that I was going to have to fake it til I made it. Well thankfully I wasn’t the only one in the same boat. A few other students in the class had similar experiences in English 1010. Then you started asking what we learned in English 1010 and I was like “ahhh crap” and then started talking about stuff I had no idea about and hadn't learned. I thought this class was going to be a living hell and I would never understand anything. Well I can honestly say that this class taught me a lot. I was able to learn how to better my writing skills and was able to use them this semester. I know this sounds like I am kissing butt it is the truth.  

I had never really done a large research project where we would spend more than two weeks working on it. Until this semester that is, we worked on our topic for the whole semester. To be completely honest when we started the first project I had no idea that the topic we picked was the one we would be working on all semester. I thought it was just for the first little project. Well turns out I was quite very wrong. I guess you could say at this point I am quite sick of my topic and quite ready to be done with it. It was cool to learn about and study, but I need to be done with it.  

The topic I have been researching is technology and how it has changed how we live today. Technology is a part of our daily lives, we use it pretty much everywhere we go. Technology has changed how we live. We use it so much and often we probably wouldn’t be able to function without it. Everyone pretty much has a smartphone that they have with them at almost all times. A phone holds a person's life together. They have everything on their phone and don’t go anywhere without it. You now hold more information at your fingertips then you would ever need. “a phone is not for making just calls; we can check emails, order weekly food shopping, take photographs, listen to music, watch hours of videos; the list is endless”

Technology for a college aged student is used not only daily but hourly if not more. I am currently using technology to do my homework right now. Without technology I wouldn’t be able to turn it in unless in class. We rely on technology for so much that we do every single day of our lives. We use it in for our education, work, personal and social life.  

The use of technology in the classroom in college is only increasing. It is more common to have a class that uses technology over paper then have a class primarily done on paper. Technology has added new ways to learn and participate in the classroom. “Technologies can enhance learning by requiring interaction and active responses by students Cell phones, tablets, computers, and clickers can be used for students to respond to classroom activities. In this way the entire classroom is participating, and learning can be enhanced, especially compared with standard lecture.” In my experience I have noticed that when professors use technology in the class to teach the students are more engaged rather than just listen to a lecture. It is much easier to follow and stay focused when you are doing something when learning in the classroom.

Students are going to use their phone in class so we might as well make it useful. If they are participating and using their phone for class, they are less likely to use it for other purposes because they need it in order to participate and follow the lesson. Doing this can distract them from their usual in class phone habits. We live in a world where all college students have a phone and 95% of them bring it to all their classes. We know that they will have it with them it is just up to the professor to decide how they want their students to be using their devices.

Technology has changed the way we learn in school. We now use the internet for just about everything school related. I can’t think of the last time that I turned in an assignment that I didn’t use any technology for. We use it for everything we do at school. Before technology students would have to haul around books for each of their classes. If they had to do research, they would have to go to the library and find a book that they could use to try and research whatever it was they needed. I can’t even imagine doing school like this. I am so lucky to have access to anything information I could ever need and have it right at my fingertips and be able to access it instantly.  

Some schools are completely paperless now and they aren’t allowed to do anything on paper. This is becoming a more common thing in schools today to help push technology education. It also is better for the environment since we are no longer needing to use paper for every assignment, test, quiz, textbook etc. I know that for me I am a fan of the forward movement in becoming paperless in schools. I love doing my homework on the computer. I much rather carry around a laptop then stacks of books and tons of papers for each of my classes. It sure makes for a much lighter backpack which I am a fan of.  

I don’t understand the people who try and fight the use of technology. This is the way the world is moving and being able to know how to use it is going to be crucial in order to get by. Technology is a part of our everyday lives and will be from here on. Technoloy is becoming more common and only getting better and faster than ever. Technology is here to make our lives easier in a sense. Things that used to be done by hand are now able to be done over the internet. We no longer need to put in all this effort to do something that can so easily be done in just a few moments. We can be way more efficient with all the resources available to us.

The younger generation which I believe to be the generation I belong to is pretty tech savvy for the most part. All my friends and most people I know my age own a smart phone and use social media daily if not quite often. We understand that technology is something that we are going to have to use for the rest of our lives and in order to get by you need at least a basic understanding on how to use it. More and more jobs are requiring that you are knowledgeable in the technology field. The better you are at using technology the better off you will be in life. I love technology and look forward to continuing to see the advancements we have ahead. It is growing so fast and we are constantly being amazed on all the new changes that are happening all around us.  

[paytonsportfolio]

Reading Through the Screen

The excessive amount of technology that has been implemented into today's society has been an ongoing controversial topic. Whether it rots our brains or makes us ten times smarter, people across the globe deal with digital literacy every day. Technology has advanced greatly over the last few decades and has completely shaped how we live. Our daily routines revolve around technology. We look at our phones when we wake and when we go to bed. We can even track our calories burned every single day. The fact is, digital literacy dominates the people of our society’s everyday lives.  

In order to be successful in today’s mechanically driven world, you must be literate and have some experience with computers. Most of the time, whether you are working at your job or completing a project for school, you deal with digital literacy. It doesn’t matter how high or low of a paycheck you receive. You will deal with digital literacy; for example, employees at Taco Bell are required to read the upcoming order on a screen to ensure that they cook and prepare the correct order on time. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have a higher-ranking job than working at Taco Bell, like a CEO of a company, you are also required to digitally read and communicate.  

There’s also the other aspect of looking at a much younger population, children in school. The expectation of having computer and literacy skills have skyrocketed. Even at the age of eight, sometimes even younger, students are taught computer skills. When I was in grade school, it was required for me to take multiple years of typing classes. This class entails reading words and phrases off a computer screen and typing them in response. Sometimes the program will even give you paragraphs to read and type. It was very fast pace; therefore, my classmates and I had to retain the text quickly in order to do well in the class. For students that don’t have the opportunity to take this class, I think it is a setback in learning to have a relationship with the computer. After lots of repetition and practice, you get used to typing a particular way, but for the students that aren’t taking this class, it will be hard for them to type at a faster pace.  

Students most commonly use digital literacy when they are unsure of a question and search for the answer on a web browser. This can be very useful and is not only done by students. When attending a university, it is required to have a laptop or tablet to complete coursework and utilize it during class. Colleges like Cleveland State University operate their courses through computer programs. Cleveland State University uses a program called Blackboard. Blackboard uploads course materials that are a key role in a student’s success. Many grade schools and universities, mostly private institutions, supply students with iPads, encouraging them to read and do their homework outside of the classroom. Other students don’t bother with the readings and download games like “Subway Surfer” instead.  

Text messages are the most common types of digital literacy that are used daily. Nowadays, everyone has a cell phone. Texting can be used for a variety of things. It can be very beneficial. In some cases, getting a text could save a life; for example, if you have a home intruder, you must contact someone for help. Calling the police is your first option; however, you must stay quiet. Luckily, we have texting. In today’s modern world you can now text the police, specifically in situations like this. Although it is not often that you will come across one of these life-threatening situations, it goes to show you that texting isn’t all that bad. Of course, when you are texting your friends, it’s not the most formal form of communication, but you still need basic literacy skills. You can’t type a long rant without punctuation. It wouldn’t make any sense.  

Along with text messages, emails are also a source of communication that is used daily. Unlike text messages, emails are often used as a formal type of communication; for example, a student will email their professor a question about an assignment when they are not in class. You can’t email a professor like you would text a friend. It’s just unprofessional. In order for your email to look professional, you must know the format to set your email in. Normally, you start with a greeting, which addresses who you are speaking to. Following your greeting is your body, where you get your point across. Finally, you close your email with your name and a phrase like “thank you” or “sincerely.” If you don’t use these essential literacy skills, you will be unprofessional.  

Social media has a huge influence on the forever evolving English language. Slang is used and seen daily on social media, text messages, or conversations with friends. Considering how often humans use these phrases, they are essential in today's pop culture, but slang has been evolving for decades. One of the more recent phrases that was established from social media is “and I oop!” A viral video of a drag queen, Ms. Jasmine Masters, was in the middle of a rant and accidentally hit her genitalia on a chair. “And I oop” can be portrayed many ways and used in many different situations. It is most commonly used when someone sees or hears about something that catches them off guard; for example, you are walking around town and see your friend with their ex-boyfriend. For people like my friends and I, it is our first instinct to say, “and I oop!” This is just one of many examples of slang that have dramatically affected the new ways of language.  

If my generation lived twenty years ago when we didn’t have the current, advanced technology. We would be lost. How would we show our followers what we are eating for lunch every day? You can’t “D.M.” a guy that you think is cute. You would have to speak to him in person. Imagine if you had to read a physical newspaper to learn about the latest news like our grandparents did, and no, there is no such thing as facetime. You can’t video chat your friend and have them walk you through how to break up with your boyfriend over text. We take all of these things for granted because we use them daily.  

I can assume that most grandparents are like mine and always ask how to operate technology. Almost every time I visit my grandparents, I am asked a new question. “How do you make the words bigger?” “Can you download some music for me?” Of course, I always help, but what’s hard to admit is that I always tend to not understand why it’s so hard for my grandmother to operate an iPhone. Then again, could you imagine having to adapt to rotating landlines to portable telephones that can do almost everything that a computer can do? They went from having jobs that have little interaction with technology similar to what we have today to adapting to screens and operated machinery surrounding their workplace.  

Whether you believe the overpowering amount of technology that is available to people across the world is a threat to one’s brain, or if you believe being able to create an Excell spreadsheet makes you a genius, technology isn’t going anywhere. People are constantly reading and writing through a screen. Almost every aspect of life has been modified because of technology. There are new ways to communicate, learn, write, or generally do your job. It is expected to be digital literate today in order to be successful. Digital literacy is used every day in all different kinds of aspects.  

[nels9424-blog]

Digital Citizenship and Learner- Blog Post #3

Digital Citizenship may often be confused with Digital Literacy, but it takes that idea one step forward. While digital literacy equips learners with the tools to learn well online, teaching digital citizen encourages responsibility and safety online. There are nine important parts to digital citizenship: digital access, digital commerce, digital communication and collaboration, digital etiquette, digital fluency, digital health and welfare, digital law, digital rights and responsibility, and digital security and privacy (Otteson, 2018). In this way, learners are forced to treat the internet like it is it’s own society, with all of its own rules and regulations. When we think about the internet in this sense, it shows that we, as learners, have to work towards treating the other learners around us, as well as the platform we are using with a certain level of respect if we want to fully be engaged in that community. In the writing “Social media competence and digital citizenship among college students” go on to argue that digital citizenship is like a norms of behavior, as if there is some kind of common agreement to users (Xu, Yang, MacLeod, and Zhu, 2018). 

Now to further the claim that digital literacy is different from digital citizenship, it is important to look at the skill sets associated with digital literacy. Digital literacy is a lot more about developing skills around using the internet while digital citizenship focuses on the rules of the internet. Common sense media mentions that kids, but I think this can include all learners, essential digital literacy skills include “effective searching” and “understanding digital footprints” (. Both are very important for learners who want to gain knowledge from the internet because these two aspects act as if they are on the same digital coin. Both digital aspects are used to foster learning in a way that is respectful and helpful to everyone using it, while also protecting the privacy of the learner. 

To continue the idea that digital citizenship is for more then just children, it is important to examine college students and other adult learners. I, as an adult learner myself, use the internet almost everyday for my classes, whether that be to find helpful articles to include in my essay or posting a question online. If I did not know how to give credit to my sources or was unable to respectfully ask a question, I would be lost and confused. As an adult learner I think it is important to actively incorporate digital citizenship into learning, which means we have to be thinking about the different components of digital citizenship. While I think it is impractical to include every aspect, I think earners need to be focused on digital etiquette and digital communication and collaboration. As learners, it is important to share our knowledge with one another but we must know how to exchange this information to be successful. 

Teachers and Professors can also work to foster digital citizenship skills as well. Teachers have the freedom to memorize the basics with basics with their students from a young age, where professors may be meeting people who need to use digital media right away without having the time to actually learn all of the aspects of digital citizenship. Two ways that teachers and professors can teach digital citizenship is through training at the beginning of classes and out of class meetings(Starks, 2017). By having the requirement at the start of classes to learn about digital citizenship, it is putting everyone as a base level of knowledge, making sure every know at least a little bit of information. Then by having the outside meetings, it can allow learners who need supplemental knowledge in digital citizenship to seek the knowledge they need without missing a class. 

For More Information, Check out these sites: 

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/hosting-a-class-twitter-chat-in-your-classroom/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH6869bD8iU

Outside Sources: https://www.iste.org/explore/Digital-citizenship/3-ways-to-foster-digital-citizenship-in-schools

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/news-and-media-literacy/what-is-digital-literacy

[marymosley]

Read to Know: India & Perils of Fake News, How to Spot it

The notion of ‘Fake news’ has a sweeping and pervasive ramification in India & across globe. It can adversely interfere with the communal affinity within the country provided such fake news is not kept under the regulation as our history speaks. The proliferation of technology, slash rated smart phones, and modest data charges have capacitated the democratizing of the content that is available online. Hence , the free streaming of speech has ripened into something  vulnerable to the trading  of information that is often unverified .Modernistic  events  in India are an indication  of lurking and plausible ruination, misfortune and abuse feeding  from  the political misinformation to a flurry  of lynching’s.

‘Fake news’ is a standard genre of yellow journalism consisting  of scrupulous and pre-designed disinformation  that are circulated by the route of conventional print, broadcasting news media or through the social media platforms with the purpose of  misleading  so as to destruct  an agency, a body, person or for  profiting monetarily  or politically  by the virtue of  sensationalism, treachery, corruption, concocted  headlines for widening and expanding the  readership, sharing , and  the Internet click revenue.

  Are there longstanding laws for tackling the fake news in India?

There is no clear-cut law for dealing with fake news. Free advertisements, publishing and broadcasting of the news outflow from the right to freedom of speech and expression that has been dedicated as a fundamental right under Article 19 of the Constitution. Nonetheless, there is scarcely any legal recourse that is made available and accessible for those people who are deeply afflicted by such fake news. Complaints are registered with the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) which epitomizes the private TV news and current affairs broadcasters.  The Indian Broadcast Foundation (IBF) delves into the various complaints that are against those contents which are aired by the channels. Additionally, there are statutory bodies such as the Press Council of India. While withdrawing the notification pertaining to fake news, the government opined that the issues branching from fake news must be dealt with in the Press Council of India’s ambit.

Viewed from the spectrum of Sections 153 and 295, actions can be instituted against the culprit who has created or has been responsible for circulating such fake news if it can be entitled as a hate speech by lodging an FIR .A defamation suit can also be filed against a person by such a person who finds such statement as defamatory under Section 499 of IPC. [1].

Examples: Terms such as “fake news”, or  “alternative facts” shall be eternally  associated with  the Presidential Election(2016).Bamboozling stories like  Hillary Clinton trading  weapons to  the ISIS while Pope Francis having endorsed Trump for the post of President were immensely  liked and commented upon  by millions on social media platform , while many were in a fix   for not being able to detect the legitimacy  of such headlines.

Currently, as the Supreme Court‘s decision upon the Rohingya refugees was declared, fictitious videos and pictures of the attacks against the Hindus by supposed “Islamic terrorists” instigated baseless and spurious barbarism on the platform of social media.

However, such fake sensational news drama  is not only confined to the political arena  but also has its wings spread all over .Such  hoaxes also comprise of  stories of crime, with one such peculiar  tale encircling  a lady’ ’s intense  reaction on winning a  lottery being engaged with on social media  almost 1.77 million times. The oscillation with which the aforesaid false headlines impregnate the social media as well as the internet is disturbing, because more than half of the population claim to see such fake news on social media platforms like Face book or Twitter on a habitual foot.

Fake news spread like wild fire over WhatsApp, regarding the two thousand rupees note being equipped with some spying technology that would track bills which were one twenty meters below the surface of earth. Later, the Finance Minister  had to refute the falsities, which was not as early as the dissemination of the news to the dominant news outlets.

An extensively circulated email as well as a WhatsApp message became breaking news when it declared that the UNESCO had given recognition to Jana Gana Mana as the best anthem in the whole world. But the unfortunate fact was UNESCO never did such thing.

The instances are endless and the problem is not just confined to India .WhatsApp has been immensely and brutally misused in other countries such as Brazil, Myanmar and Mexico as well.

Notwithstanding, the debate about whose duty it is in reality for combating such fake news rumbles on. After boundless pressure from government and the media, Face book did take steps for limiting the amount of deceiving articles on its site by flagging an article if it is factually imprecise and unreliable.

  Fake news destabilizing the Indian society:

Indian society has been known for its all-inclusive nature, that is immensely compassionate, and tolerant all throughout the history but reflecting at the ongoing trend, all that is perceivable is the total opposite of all these root values which had made India so extraordinary. The fake news trend has proved to be fatal to the social fiber of the country, where every community is at loggerheads with other communities.

  Government’s inactivity in handling the circumstances:

So far, the government  has  deliberately failed in  eradicating the plague of fake news .The authorities have been instantaneous  in blaming  WhatsApp or  other online  platforms of social media, while yet not  acting responsible for addressing  the worriment  from their part .

The Apex Court has asked the Parliament for formulating  a distinct  law for  dealing  with the issues  of lynching, since it has become  so rampant  because of the  spreading  of fake news resulting in the destabilization of the basic bedrock  of the society and instilling despair  among the public.

  WhatsApp’s fights against ‘Fake News’

To  deal with the burning issue  of sensational  and  fake news  upon its platform, an advertisement  was published by Whatsapp  across various  newspaper  to  guide  its  readers to check the authenticity of a news  in the form of easy tips , which in turn acts as guide for zillions of users for tackling the perils of  fake news. [3]

Suggestions and recommendations on how to deal with fake news:

A paramount issue lies in giving a proper definition to the concept of fake news. However, some recommendations and suggestions are listed below to deal with the menace:

Ensuring media literacy becomes essential as digital literacy encourages individuals in learning the skills that are needed for navigating the web while posing questions to the contents that are posted.

 Nurturing a customary culture of skepticism among  the citizens and netizens towards the concept of information.

Verification of  the origin  of  such  news and affirmation  with  the parallel news,  should  be encouraged in the  schools and through  various education campaigns. One of the heartening examples being the Satyameva Jayate programme in schools.

In cases where there exists a danger to life / national security, legal interference must be explored.

Common sense, being the best defense.Citizens must gather news and information only from authenticated sources. After all, it is the citizens who are responsible for taking care, loving and building up the society while doing away with the plague of fake news.[4]

Hence, implementing  the  above mentioned prongs  shall  not only  act as supportable and viable reply to such  fake news, but  shall also help in striking a much needed  resonance  with free speech considerations.[5]

  Steps taken by regulatory bodies and Government

The government of West Bengal  has been working  upon  a new law  for  tackling  the plague of fake news  and  similar  posts on  the platform of social media, an initiative  that emerges  against the scenery  of such posts going viral and causing  predicament  and unrest in the country.[6] The telecom ministry has given its approval upon the rules pertaining to net neutrality that would no more treat internet as a luxury but rather a public utility, implying that Indians shall no longer have internet access from the zero-rated plans, which limit the accessing to only a few websites.[7]

Google has been focusing upon improving and stabilizing this entire situation. Not long ago, had the company declared the ‘Google News Initiative‘for improving the passage to reliable and  quality based news  that is available online.

Finally ,  for contending  the repercussions  of such fake news, the  successful measures ought to  target three  major areas comprising of  producers,  and distributors of information as well as  information consumption.[8]

  How can one spot a fake digital content?

Credits: IFLA

If one has a doubt regarding a published article, one must use Google for checking its    authenticity on the verified websites.

If one has an iota of doubt with regard to an image that has been published, one can simply verify the image context by a click on the “Search Google for image”. A mere click upon the image shall let one know about its authentic date of publishing, its contexts and etc.

Various online websites have extended their help in assisting people for detecting the contaminated digital content and for protecting journalism. Several fake news buster websites are available, some of them are —SM HOAX SLAYER (English),ALT NEWS (English),MEDIAVIGIL (Hindi).

Hence, the next time when one comes across a WhatsApp forwarded message or any such message on online platform which instigates a fuss and is highly objectionable, one must cross-examine it.[9]

  Conclusion:

In a nutshell, for eradicating the plague of fake news, the media houses in India ought to participate in these initiatives, while taking the responsibility to be judicious, logical and follow the path of transparency in providing the news online.

But the lion’s share lies upon the citizen.  Before we share anything on the social media platforms we must ask ourselves  – is it worth it? If such question raises a doubt, we must abstain from sharing such news. This might be perceived as a very simple habit  in  the process of being a sensible and  responsible citizen, but in the long run this habit will undoubtedly  sum up   to be immensely  valuable for safeguarding our democracy.[10]

  [1] https://ift.tt/2qWFNiw

[2] https://ift.tt/2FKs9ZU

[3] https://ift.tt/2qVdnWe

[4] https://ift.tt/2Fy1MpZ

[5] https://ift.tt/2KLxzpC

[6] https://ift.tt/2LSdxpO

[7] https://ift.tt/2qYipkz

[8] https://ift.tt/2FA4VWp

[9] https://ift.tt/2qZVqWn

[10] https://ift.tt/2Fw5qRk

  The post Read to Know: India & Perils of Fake News, How to Spot it appeared first on Legal Desire.

Read to Know: India & Perils of Fake News, How to Spot it published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[awesome-severelyvirtualstud-blog]

Module 11

https://www.edcan.ca/articles/the-king-of-denmark-and-the-naked-mole-rat-teaching-critical-thinking-for-social-justice/

"The King of Denmark and the Naked Mole Rat: Teaching Critical Thinking for Social Justice (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site." by Danielle McLaughlin

What are the most salient points for you?

“Rarely are our children shown videos of First Nations people in Manitoba or Ontario who do not have clean and safe water, or decent school facilities. Nor are they shown the excellent living conditions enjoyed by the leaders of the countries in which people have no safe drinking water or schools.” 

This struck a nerve with me. How do we explore social justice issues and become more mindful of how we are working for a social justice cause? It is easier to look at injustices in other countries. It is hard to hold a mirror up and reflect on our own flaws. This reading opened my eyes to the fact we do focus on the outside and need to look closer to home and be critical thinkers when tackling a social justice issue.

“Democracy does not, in fact, depend solely upon the rule of the majority; it depends upon the understanding that the majority should be subject to questions and that minority values and views will be tolerated where they do not cause significant harm.”

It is important to question the majority, there have been lots of things in the past that were considered best practice. Owning people, beating your wife, stealing children to educate them are just a few things that were once legal and supported by the majority. These practices are now illegal and only supported by a small minority.  

“Giving the franchise to women, First Nations peoples, prisoners, and others who did not previously have the right to vote; integrating neighbourhoods, industries, schools; joining people of different races or of the same sex in marriage; covering or uncovering our heads and faces in public have all, at one time or another, met with scorn, offense, and strong negative feelings. Nonetheless, principles of equality and freedom have slowly gained the upper hand. This did not happen by silencing either side of the conflicts involved in these issues.”

It is true, empathy from the majority is need to create change. The only way to create change is to listen to both sides of the argument. It is painful to know that my ancestors thought it was okay to treat women as property. This change didn’t happen by chance. People in power need to hear the debate. They need to become empathetic to the disenfranchised group. The only way for this to happen was for people to speak their points of view. In the story by Mo Willems, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, Wilbur asked WHY? Why can’t we wear clothes? We needed people in power to ask WHY? Why can’t women vote? Why can’t same sex couples get married? These questions needed empathetic people to listen to the argument and realize no harm would come from changing common practices. To make these hard conversations we have to create empathetic critical thinkers who can listen to both sides of the argument and know what is just.

This is tricky, we don’t want to indoctrinate students. We want them to think for themselves and realize they should question why things are the way they are.

Module 12

Create a checklist for yourself of the key issues for advocacy that you would address in some way.

Oberg, D. (2014). Ignoring the evidence: Another decade of decline for school libraries. Education Canada

https://www.edcan.ca/articles/ignoring-the-evidence-another-decade-of-decline-for-school-libraries/

I connected with this article. Oberg went into detail how other countries were using their libraries to create change. The evidence given proved that having a well-stocked library with properly trained staff improved student reading scores.

·         offer access to technology and digital resources

I make sure our lap-tops and iPads are working, I host workshops to share how new apps work and how to access the districts digital web-licenses.

·         bring people together,

I have started a library club, this has given students a sense of place and they are always promoting the library.

·         place learning of all kinds

Reading and writing are not the only activities, I’ve been promoting the use of technology literacy. Practicing technology literacy and discovering new websites and apps to create with has been exciting. I’ve been able to report to parents about the work students have been doing.

The main point made is that I need to report to parents and my principal about what we are doing in the library. If I’m not putting out a newsletter or sending home information about what the students are doing, will anyone know about it? If people don’t know what we are doing will they see value in the library? Probably not. Tell everyone about the exciting things happening in the library. If you don’t tell, they will never know.

http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/demonstrating-our-impact-1.html

district’s “Year End Report” asks library media specialists to enumerate the following: Circulation statistics: Number of print materials circulated AV materials circulated In-library circulation of print In-library circulation AV materials AV equipment circulated Use of space: Classes held/hosted Drop in users Computer lab After hours Other uses Collections: Number of books acquired and deleted  Number of AV materials acquired and deleted Number of software programs acquired and deleted

I don’t have access to all the data listed here. I know I can start with circulation statistics and the use of the space. It would be nice to see a tech report from our district technology leaders. 

Krashen, S. (2014, February 16). Dr. Stephen Krashen defends libraries at LAUSD board meeting

I’ve seen several of Dr. Krashen’s youtube video’s defending libraries. He has created a paper with oodles of facts about how important it is to support libraries, not cut their funding. He gets up and speaks at different events to support libraries. This is what advocacy looks like to me, but I’m not that brave person that can stand up at a meeting of my peers and present facts to protect or increase funding to our schools library. I can share his video with my peers and hope they take the time to view it. I’m not is a place in my career where I can stick my neck out.

Module 13

You will end where you began:

·         addressing your initial essential question;

How do I share digital technology with students and staff, to improve critical thinking and digital literacy?

I’ve explored many 2.0 web activities to share with my student and staff. I was able to create a symbaloo page to share with staff and students. https://edu.symbaloo.com/home/mix/13ePGb48OS

I’m excited to go deeper with these activities to see what the students can create once they have to basics of how to explore these sites safely.

I was able to take the online teacher workshop for Common Sense Media and I’m excited to implement the lessons on digital citizen ship next September. https://www.commonsense.org/education/

This is a way that I can support the classroom teachers with health and safety curriculum and increase critical thinking literacy while exploring digital literacy. This tool will help me with a large part of my goal.

·         giving a summary of the evolution of your curation;

First I had to figure out what a curation was, then I had to figure out how to share what I collected. Using Tumbler to share and symbaloo to organize was the best platform for me. Tumbler was easy to use and free. Symbaloo is a colourful way to organize web 2.0 tools to save for later. You can also save youtube clips and websites.

https://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/librarystuff5

I’ve become comfortable blogging in tumbler. I have never used this format before, but I’ve become comfortable with it and can see how this would be a useful tool to use with students. Not tumbler itself, but a closed blog that I could use with a class.

https://edublogs.org/ looks like a great place to start. I still need to do more research to understand how best to use this tool and promote it with my administration and co-workers.

I’m also excited to try padlet with my grade 6/7 group. I think this might be a great way to share books the students enjoy. Kids want to read what the other kids are enjoying.

·         suggestions: perhaps summarizing your ideal library, anticipating where you want to make a difference in your school. It is up to you, at any rate, it should tie up your learning curation and the module content. 

Next steps!

https://www.schoollibrarianconnection.com/hong-kong-2014.html

I found this great doodle art at School librarian Connection. It shows everything I would like to do, but I need to make a 5 year plan to get the support for change.

This is my first task, I need to make the space user friendly. We need new stairs  The collection is up a flight of stairs that are not up to code. We have been given permission to fix them this summer. I’m working on the design with a carpenter. We are hoping to create new reading spaces under them and book displays on the wall. Like when you see lots of framed photo graphs in someones house up the stairs. Cozy space to read will encourage better reading practices.

Maker space is the buzz in our district. I need to create some affordable kits that students and teachers will use. I need to send out a survey to staff to find out what curriculum focus areas they would like to see. I have lots of great ideas, but I want to have input from the people I’m creating for. I can create great maker space kits, but they are not doing me or my clients if they don’t get used.

I need to also advocate for more hours for the library to be open. I need to speak with the administration about being open during first break to students for book exchange and a space for free voluntary reading. Yes, it is important that children go outside and play. It is also important that they can get a new book when they need one. I’m the only library in our community. Students don’t have the option to go to the next town to get a book. We don’t even have a place that sells books. The students that want to read and need a place to belong will gravitate to the space. I just need to get permission to do this. 

I’ve discovered lots of 2.0 websites to share with staff and students. Now I need to focus on digital citizenship. It will be great to use commonsense media  lessons while co-teaching in September. This will help set the ground rules and expectations of how to treat the school equipment. It will also set the expectations of behavior online.  This will help when we start to blog and use padlet. Now all I need to do is make my five year plan and share it with my school.

[perfectzablog]

Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims

Michelle Joyce doesn’t shy away from politicized science topics such as climate change. In fact, she works to equip seniors at Palmetto Ridge High School in Naples, Florida with the skills to accurately evaluate those topics on their own. Along with teaching chemistry and physics, she offers a class called “thinking skills” where students solve logic and math puzzles while also enhancing their media literacy. Students go beyond just learning about legitimate sources of information on the internet and delve into just how the information is put together in the first place.

But teaching students those critical thinking skills only as they’re about to depart for college can be too little too late.

“It’s a really hard thing to teach within the space of everything else that you need to teach in a classroom,” Joyce said. “It’s crucial that we teach it as early as we can.”

The internet has no shortage of dubious information; and the ability to evaluate health and science claims is a subset of media literacy. With the abundance of health/science content students may only see via social media, kids are ill-equipped to discern hype from real science.

In one recent study by the Stanford History Education Group, 170 high school students were shown a photo of flowers growing fused together and asked if that provided strong evidence on the conditions outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Students with mastery of media literacy would argue this was not sufficient evidence because there is no information on the source of the photo or where the flowers were photographed. However, less than 20 percent of the students responding made that argument. Nearly 40 percent argued that the picture alone was strong evidence for conditions outside the nuclear plant.

“We are swimming in bullsh-t and lots of different claims about what helps or harms us,” said Dr. Andrew Oxman, director of research at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. “Everybody needs to figure out which claims are trustworthy.”

START EARLY

Many of these critical thinking concepts are not difficult but need to become habits adopted early in life, which is why Oxman first tried them out in his children’s elementary school classrooms. One way to teach how science is made is to let the children experience and figure it out for themselves.

Oxman gave students a bag of M&Ms and told them that some kids thought the red ones helped them study better but others got stomach aches. He instructed students to evaluate these claims.

“They figured out very quickly, you have to compare like to like,” said Oxman.

The most revealing aspect of this lesson was how quickly students understood the pitfalls of setting up a randomized study. The teacher mentioned they could set random assignments much like they do in gym class where they set up teams by alternating students in line.

“The kids started laughing because they understood right away that doesn’t work,” said Oxman. Students learned they can sabotage randomization in picking teams by setting up a line so they are one student away from their friend.

“In research jargon, we referred to that as ‘concealed allocation’ and it’s a concept that takes time to explain to health professionals but the kids understood it right away intuitively.”

Through this experiment students quickly figured out they had to measure things exactly same. They discovered the flaws of using small samples and being misled by games of chance, he added.

Oxman has since taken this idea of teaching young children concepts of evaluating science to a much larger scale.

Teaching Health Claims

He and a global team of researchers at Informed Health Choices developed a study of some 10,000 Ugandan fifth-graders to see if a simple comic book on evaluating health claims could provide students with the skills to make better choices about their health. The comic book begins by describing how one child — who has burned his finger — sticks his wound into dung to heal it. The finger gets infected and he visits Professors “Fair” and “Compare” and begins to learn about how to question and evaluate the health advice he receives.

The comic above was used as part of a study in Uganda to teach students how to evaluate health and science claims. Courtesy of Informed Health Choices. (Courtesy of Informed Health Choices)

The workbook had a convincing effect, Oxman said. The students who received the workbook and those who did not receive it were then tested on how to evaluate health claims. Fifty percent more children in the workbook group had a passing score on that critical thinking test. Twenty percent of the students receiving the workbook even showed mastery of the concepts.

As a follow-up to the study, researchers are asking children and adults what they learned and how they’ve used it. Responses so far have been very promising, he added.

One girl talked about going shopping with her mom, who picked up an expensive new brand of toothpaste, but the girl picked up an older brand of toothpaste and found the ingredients were the same. During the pilot studies, Oxman said it was fun to see kids walking out of class talking to each other about claims. Recognizing a claim, and being able to determine if it’s trustworthy is the critical first step to appraising all the claims people hear every day, he said. 

EVALUATING CLAIMS

Palmetto Ridge High School science teacher Michelle Joyce said she uses a process called “claim, evidence and response.”

First students recognize a claim or a hypothesis. Next, they look at evidence: the original data; who calculated the data; where the study was conducted; if the researcher would be inclined to benefit from a certain result; if researchers did multiple trials or tested on many people and more. Finally, students must come up with a response: a determination of the validity of the claim.

Joyce uses resources from a variety of places including Common Sense Education*, a nonprofit that provides free curriculum in media literacy for grades K-12.

When teachers tackle the subject of media literacy they may think about social media etiquette or cyberbullying — that’s a component of media literacy called digital citizenship. But teaching media literacy can also go into specific domains such as health and science. To understand the science news they see online, kids need to understand basic concepts like sample sizes or what “peer review” means, said Jeffrey Knutson of Common Sense Education. Through this curriculum, students learn how information is created and distributed.

“It gives them an insider’s view of how information we get is created and how we receive it,” said Knutson.

Digital citizenship and media literacy is often taught as something extra and not necessarily embedded in curriculum, said Knutson. However, health or science claims seen online can be easily incorporated into science or health class.

One example Knutson provided was a recent New York Times article about health hazards of chemicals used in packaging such as boxed macaroni and cheese. The article stirred up some controversy because it didn’t offer specifics on what dose of these chemicals can do damage. The study was financed by an environmental advocacy group, not an unbiased source. The Times reported on this study and other journalists reported on it and then reports about the reporting came out, noted Knutson.

“The best thing teachers can do is to use these examples in their class with their students,” according to Knutson. “It’s important to model how you would go about reading an article like that.”

BREAKING DOWN THE FACTS

High school science teacher Michelle Joyce says that if teachers start in elementary school, and build on these concepts in middle and high school, “we have significantly more chance over a period of time to build this common sense, this media literacy,” said Joyce.

“If I’m only seeing them in 11th and 12th grade, many of their opinions are already formed,” she added.

When Joyce really breaks a scientific topic into its component parts, she can sometimes convince skeptical students.

For instance, students were learning the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, which stems from water temperature and salt-level or salinity increases. They researched where the increased salinity or temperature could be coming from, including climate change and waste dumped near the ocean.

One student said, “I can’t believe one degree in temperature makes this much a difference for these animals,” recalled Joyce.

Instead of rehashing the reef data, Joyce brought the conversation back to a different perspective and explained pH levels in the human body. Even a slight change in pH could shut down a person’s bodily functions. Suddenly the minor change to water temperature and salinity, which affects pH, didn’t seem so minor.

“I have to bring it back to something they can relate to,” said Joyce.

Joyce can’t go into such detail with every science lesson but she hopes by equipping students with the skills to question what they read, they’ll be able to pursue these questions on their own.

“Teaching them those skills on how to think like a scientist and how to analyze information that they’re receiving is just as important as teaching them to use the periodic table, for example.”

Additional resources: 

Common Sense has several strategies to help debunk false claims, such as those listed on “Turn Students into Fact-Finding Web Detectives.” They also offer digital citizenship and information literacy curriculum.

Health News Review covers often-hyped health stories.

Retraction Watch  highlights retractions of studies and other pitfalls of the peer review system, which rarely gets attention.

*Common Sense Education contributes reviews of educational tools and other content to MindShift.  

Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims published first on http://ift.tt/2xi3x5d

[bisoroblog]

Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims

Michelle Joyce doesn’t shy away from politicized science topics such as climate change. In fact, she works to equip seniors at Palmetto Ridge High School in Naples, Florida with the skills to accurately evaluate those topics on their own. Along with teaching chemistry and physics, she offers a class called “thinking skills” where students solve logic and math puzzles while also enhancing their media literacy. Students go beyond just learning about legitimate sources of information on the internet and delve into just how the information is put together in the first place.

But teaching students those critical thinking skills only as they’re about to depart for college can be too little too late.

“It’s a really hard thing to teach within the space of everything else that you need to teach in a classroom,” Joyce said. “It’s crucial that we teach it as early as we can.”

The internet has no shortage of dubious information; and the ability to evaluate health and science claims is a subset of media literacy. With the abundance of health/science content students may only see via social media, kids are ill-equipped to discern hype from real science.

In one recent study by the Stanford History Education Group, 170 high school students were shown a photo of flowers growing fused together and asked if that provided strong evidence on the conditions outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Students with mastery of media literacy would argue this was not sufficient evidence because there is no information on the source of the photo or where the flowers were photographed. However, less than 20 percent of the students responding made that argument. Nearly 40 percent argued that the picture alone was strong evidence for conditions outside the nuclear plant.

“We are swimming in bullsh-t and lots of different claims about what helps or harms us,” said Dr. Andrew Oxman, director of research at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. “Everybody needs to figure out which claims are trustworthy.”

START EARLY

Many of these critical thinking concepts are not difficult but need to become habits adopted early in life, which is why Oxman first tried them out in his children’s elementary school classrooms. One way to teach how science is made is to let the children experience and figure it out for themselves.

Oxman gave students a bag of M&Ms and told them that some kids thought the red ones helped them study better but others got stomach aches. He instructed students to evaluate these claims.

“They figured out very quickly, you have to compare like to like,” said Oxman.

The most revealing aspect of this lesson was how quickly students understood the pitfalls of setting up a randomized study. The teacher mentioned they could set random assignments much like they do in gym class where they set up teams by alternating students in line.

“The kids started laughing because they understood right away that doesn’t work,” said Oxman. Students learned they can sabotage randomization in picking teams by setting up a line so they are one student away from their friend.

“In research jargon, we referred to that as ‘concealed allocation’ and it’s a concept that takes time to explain to health professionals but the kids understood it right away intuitively.”

Through this experiment students quickly figured out they had to measure things exactly same. They discovered the flaws of using small samples and being misled by games of chance, he added.

Oxman has since taken this idea of teaching young children concepts of evaluating science to a much larger scale.

Teaching Health Claims

He and a global team of researchers at Informed Health Choices developed a study of some 10,000 Ugandan fifth-graders to see if a simple comic book on evaluating health claims could provide students with the skills to make better choices about their health. The comic book begins by describing how one child — who has burned his finger — sticks his wound into dung to heal it. The finger gets infected and he visits Professors “Fair” and “Compare” and begins to learn about how to question and evaluate the health advice he receives.

The comic above was used as part of a study in Uganda to teach students how to evaluate health and science claims. Courtesy of Informed Health Choices. (Courtesy of Informed Health Choices)

The workbook had a convincing effect, Oxman said. The students who received the workbook and those who did not receive it were then tested on how to evaluate health claims. Fifty percent more children in the workbook group had a passing score on that critical thinking test. Twenty percent of the students receiving the workbook even showed mastery of the concepts.

As a follow-up to the study, researchers are asking children and adults what they learned and how they’ve used it. Responses so far have been very promising, he added.

One girl talked about going shopping with her mom, who picked up an expensive new brand of toothpaste, but the girl picked up an older brand of toothpaste and found the ingredients were the same. During the pilot studies, Oxman said it was fun to see kids walking out of class talking to each other about claims. Recognizing a claim, and being able to determine if it’s trustworthy is the critical first step to appraising all the claims people hear every day, he said. 

EVALUATING CLAIMS

Palmetto Ridge High School science teacher Michelle Joyce said she uses a process called “claim, evidence and response.”

First students recognize a claim or a hypothesis. Next, they look at evidence: the original data; who calculated the data; where the study was conducted; if the researcher would be inclined to benefit from a certain result; if researchers did multiple trials or tested on many people and more. Finally, students must come up with a response: a determination of the validity of the claim.

Joyce uses resources from a variety of places including Common Sense Education*, a nonprofit that provides free curriculum in media literacy for grades K-12.

When teachers tackle the subject of media literacy they may think about social media etiquette or cyberbullying — that’s a component of media literacy called digital citizenship. But teaching media literacy can also go into specific domains such as health and science. To understand the science news they see online, kids need to understand basic concepts like sample sizes or what “peer review” means, said Jeffrey Knutson of Common Sense Education. Through this curriculum, students learn how information is created and distributed.

“It gives them an insider’s view of how information we get is created and how we receive it,” said Knutson.

Digital citizenship and media literacy is often taught as something extra and not necessarily embedded in curriculum, said Knutson. However, health or science claims seen online can be easily incorporated into science or health class.

One example Knutson provided was a recent New York Times article about health hazards of chemicals used in packaging such as boxed macaroni and cheese. The article stirred up some controversy because it didn’t offer specifics on what dose of these chemicals can do damage. The study was financed by an environmental advocacy group, not an unbiased source. The Times reported on this study and other journalists reported on it and then reports about the reporting came out, noted Knutson.

“The best thing teachers can do is to use these examples in their class with their students,” according to Knutson. “It’s important to model how you would go about reading an article like that.”

BREAKING DOWN THE FACTS

High school science teacher Michelle Joyce says that if teachers start in elementary school, and build on these concepts in middle and high school, “we have significantly more chance over a period of time to build this common sense, this media literacy,” said Joyce.

“If I’m only seeing them in 11th and 12th grade, many of their opinions are already formed,” she added.

When Joyce really breaks a scientific topic into its component parts, she can sometimes convince skeptical students.

For instance, students were learning the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, which stems from water temperature and salt-level or salinity increases. They researched where the increased salinity or temperature could be coming from, including climate change and waste dumped near the ocean.

One student said, “I can’t believe one degree in temperature makes this much a difference for these animals,” recalled Joyce.

Instead of rehashing the reef data, Joyce brought the conversation back to a different perspective and explained pH levels in the human body. Even a slight change in pH could shut down a person’s bodily functions. Suddenly the minor change to water temperature and salinity, which affects pH, didn’t seem so minor.

“I have to bring it back to something they can relate to,” said Joyce.

Joyce can’t go into such detail with every science lesson but she hopes by equipping students with the skills to question what they read, they’ll be able to pursue these questions on their own.

“Teaching them those skills on how to think like a scientist and how to analyze information that they’re receiving is just as important as teaching them to use the periodic table, for example.”

Additional resources: 

Common Sense has several strategies to help debunk false claims, such as those listed on “Turn Students into Fact-Finding Web Detectives.” They also offer digital citizenship and information literacy curriculum.

Health News Review covers often-hyped health stories.

Retraction Watch  highlights retractions of studies and other pitfalls of the peer review system, which rarely gets attention.

*Common Sense Education contributes reviews of educational tools and other content to MindShift.  

Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims published first on http://ift.tt/2y2Rir2

[kyshakirby-blog]

Your Tech Play 2 assignment is to: ePortfolio

Electronic or digital tools Verse physical (non-digital) portfolios

As I explored the electronic or digital tools compare and how they differ from physical (non-digital) portfolios. Digital portfolios are convenient, versatile, and extremely accessible in terms of the delivery of materials to potential clients and employers. Digital work is what’s widely accepted of presentation of professional work for most creative people in any industry and those in other media, advertising, and marketing. However, paper or hardcopy portfolios are usually in the minority in the employment market. The choice, however, isn't always simple. Both forms of portfolio have strong points in terms of presentation, and that can make the difference between getting a job or not. In some industries, quality of presentation is a true deal breaker, and it's fair to say that hardcopy is often neglected. Therefore, we have both on hand so they can follow alone with your digital presentation, some may even need to revisit later, and beside we must evolve with time and become invaders of the future.

https://pathbrite.com/KyshaKirby/EtlA.

Identify Affordances and Your Best Choice

As I explored the countless portfolio sites that were meant for educators you either have to pay or they have a 30day free trial but all the feature you could use was limited. Therefore you cannot get the full effect off the site and the tools and gadgets it offered. My top 4 sites were Wix, Google site/ Wikispaces, PortfolioGen, & Pathbrite.

Wix is a great for building a website or pages that can be used as an eportfolio site that has countless templates to help design your page.  These countless designs are free, cable of being edited, and the templates indicate there range from easy to hard to manipulate the page. You can promote your business showcase your work, test and sale online products or services. Most of all you can create and display your personality on a professional website.

Google sites are very excellent for numerous of reasons. It offers the eportfolio templates, google classroom where you can setup up a classroom for your students. It also was sort of limited to how you can export and import material. I know for sure you upload from: YouTube videos, google docs, and Facebook with no problems. This cost for the basic site was $10 a month to use and create an eportfolio account. However, you cannot use you regular Gmail account. You have to pay for a new email address which was $12 a year, not much at all ($1 a month). This would give you a google admin email account, then you would be able to get access to Google to create an eportfolios. Wikispaces were similar to Google as well in my opinion.

PortfolioGen is a super way to go if you were looking for a job. Its free, it offers cover letter templates, letter builders, example and samples. It also has 18 pages that is prename and tailored in the portfolio section such as: pictures, videos, awards you have won, achievements, journals or post, pass employment history, and etc. just click and add as many as you need. It gives you access to employers that are using search engines like this to find employees. Although, if an employer that you are interested in is not using this site no worries you can send your link to them via email and they could access it too, because you have your own URL address. In my case since I do teach a career course this would be defiantly the end results when we are in the final phrase of school which is 100 hundred hours from completion of the course and we are in chapters 30-32 which is all about preparing for your interviews, how to dress what to take and so on. Pathbrite is the one I chose it has a collaboration of Wikispace, Google Site, Wix, and PortolioGen. I can invite students, create courses, it’s even similar to Blackboard and it is free.  From a teachers stand point of view, you can track your learners growth by displaying their past challenges and successes, making their growth more visible for them to see and show their parents. Which would lead to faster learning and mastery of a course. The use of the portfolios is to help increase students reflect on what they are learning. It has the option for RTI teaching due to the collaboration of the faculty, teachers, administrators and staff can all help make sense of student productivity across a single courses or a full curriculum. It allows them to showcase their on any device such as: cell phone, tablet, or any other common display. Using Pathbrite I can engage the students earlier and more often for better career placement giving them clear advantage over others, “students get polished portfolios they can use during internships or career searches as a result” (Pathbrite).  All of this will lead to better career placement rates after graduation.

Consider context. Choice of Tool for Students to Create an ePortfolio, Why and Affordances?

I would not make any change in the tool I chose for myself because, I had the students in mind. Nevertheless I need something I could possible monitor the student on. Since we know the Generation Z students are very tech savvy and can find a way to exploit the use of the tool. However, to get the opportunity to showcase their work on any device such as: their phone, tablet, or any other common display could deter them for begin mischievous. Hoping to tap into their creative mind, building their sense of taking pride in their work. Especially if they knew their audience is more than just their peers but, potential employers, and that their work would be displayed and remembered. While effectively opening thought minds critical thinking skills through, increased reading, writing, math, terminology, problem solving abilities and reflection. Which, would be expresses their skills, passions, and mastery of their craft. This could open doors to talents or areas students did not know they possess like: editing skill, design, photography, graphics, communication, networking all while enhancing other aspects in the business. Most of all it is a time saver instead of my students going to another to site or keeping up with a piece of paper for an assignment.  I can create a courses where the learner can login, see assignments, summit course work, upload, from anywhere, create slide shows, and use drag-and-drop tools. Once the student create their account it is theirs for a life time. Therefore, at the end of your program, students get polished portfolios they can use during internships, career searches and I can also invite chain salon and salon owners as will to view their portfolio. All of this will lead to better career placement rates after graduation.

Conclusion What I discovered / learned was this site like many others are allowing the affordances, collaboration, or integration of multiple tools to be used to teach and build a learner though curriculum and technology all while keeping the learner engaged. It just requires research time creativity and thinking out the box. With this one site I chose Pathbrite it will increase the computer literacy for myself and the students. While giving us all the freedom of expressing ourselves with all types of media online. Drag-and-drop images, videos, cloud documents, presentations, LinkedIn recommendations, badges, eTranscripts, web links and even audio recordings into your portfolios.  These are skills that we all need to build on to stay marketable to be employed and enviable to a company.

[marymosley]

Read to Know: India & Perils of Fake News, How to Spot it

The notion of ‘Fake news’ has a sweeping and pervasive ramification in India & across globe. It can adversely interfere with the communal affinity within the country provided such fake news is not kept under the regulation as our history speaks. The proliferation of technology, slash rated smart phones, and modest data charges have capacitated the democratizing of the content that is available online. Hence , the free streaming of speech has ripened into something  vulnerable to the trading  of information that is often unverified .Modernistic  events  in India are an indication  of lurking and plausible ruination, misfortune and abuse feeding  from  the political misinformation to a flurry  of lynching’s.

‘Fake news’ is a standard genre of yellow journalism consisting  of scrupulous and pre-designed disinformation  that are circulated by the route of conventional print, broadcasting news media or through the social media platforms with the purpose of  misleading  so as to destruct  an agency, a body, person or for  profiting monetarily  or politically  by the virtue of  sensationalism, treachery, corruption, concocted  headlines for widening and expanding the  readership, sharing , and  the Internet click revenue.

  Are there longstanding laws for tackling the fake news in India?

There is no clear-cut law for dealing with fake news. Free advertisements, publishing and broadcasting of the news outflow from the right to freedom of speech and expression that has been dedicated as a fundamental right under Article 19 of the Constitution. Nonetheless, there is scarcely any legal recourse that is made available and accessible for those people who are deeply afflicted by such fake news. Complaints are registered with the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) which epitomizes the private TV news and current affairs broadcasters.  The Indian Broadcast Foundation (IBF) delves into the various complaints that are against those contents which are aired by the channels. Additionally, there are statutory bodies such as the Press Council of India. While withdrawing the notification pertaining to fake news, the government opined that the issues branching from fake news must be dealt with in the Press Council of India’s ambit.

Viewed from the spectrum of Sections 153 and 295, actions can be instituted against the culprit who has created or has been responsible for circulating such fake news if it can be entitled as a hate speech by lodging an FIR .A defamation suit can also be filed against a person by such a person who finds such statement as defamatory under Section 499 of IPC. [1].

Examples: Terms such as “fake news”, or  “alternative facts” shall be eternally  associated with  the Presidential Election(2016).Bamboozling stories like  Hillary Clinton trading  weapons to  the ISIS while Pope Francis having endorsed Trump for the post of President were immensely  liked and commented upon  by millions on social media platform , while many were in a fix   for not being able to detect the legitimacy  of such headlines.

Currently, as the Supreme Court‘s decision upon the Rohingya refugees was declared, fictitious videos and pictures of the attacks against the Hindus by supposed “Islamic terrorists” instigated baseless and spurious barbarism on the platform of social media.

However, such fake sensational news drama  is not only confined to the political arena  but also has its wings spread all over .Such  hoaxes also comprise of  stories of crime, with one such peculiar  tale encircling  a lady’ ’s intense  reaction on winning a  lottery being engaged with on social media  almost 1.77 million times. The oscillation with which the aforesaid false headlines impregnate the social media as well as the internet is disturbing, because more than half of the population claim to see such fake news on social media platforms like Face book or Twitter on a habitual foot.

Fake news spread like wild fire over WhatsApp, regarding the two thousand rupees note being equipped with some spying technology that would track bills which were one twenty meters below the surface of earth. Later, the Finance Minister  had to refute the falsities, which was not as early as the dissemination of the news to the dominant news outlets.

An extensively circulated email as well as a WhatsApp message became breaking news when it declared that the UNESCO had given recognition to Jana Gana Mana as the best anthem in the whole world. But the unfortunate fact was UNESCO never did such thing.

The instances are endless and the problem is not just confined to India .WhatsApp has been immensely and brutally misused in other countries such as Brazil, Myanmar and Mexico as well.

Notwithstanding, the debate about whose duty it is in reality for combating such fake news rumbles on. After boundless pressure from government and the media, Face book did take steps for limiting the amount of deceiving articles on its site by flagging an article if it is factually imprecise and unreliable.

  Fake news destabilizing the Indian society:

Indian society has been known for its all-inclusive nature, that is immensely compassionate, and tolerant all throughout the history but reflecting at the ongoing trend, all that is perceivable is the total opposite of all these root values which had made India so extraordinary. The fake news trend has proved to be fatal to the social fiber of the country, where every community is at loggerheads with other communities.

  Government’s inactivity in handling the circumstances:

So far, the government  has  deliberately failed in  eradicating the plague of fake news .The authorities have been instantaneous  in blaming  WhatsApp or  other online  platforms of social media, while yet not  acting responsible for addressing  the worriment  from their part .

The Apex Court has asked the Parliament for formulating  a distinct  law for  dealing  with the issues  of lynching, since it has become  so rampant  because of the  spreading  of fake news resulting in the destabilization of the basic bedrock  of the society and instilling despair  among the public.

  WhatsApp’s fights against ‘Fake News’

To  deal with the burning issue  of sensational  and  fake news  upon its platform, an advertisement  was published by Whatsapp  across various  newspaper  to  guide  its  readers to check the authenticity of a news  in the form of easy tips , which in turn acts as guide for zillions of users for tackling the perils of  fake news. [3]

Suggestions and recommendations on how to deal with fake news:

A paramount issue lies in giving a proper definition to the concept of fake news. However, some recommendations and suggestions are listed below to deal with the menace:

Ensuring media literacy becomes essential as digital literacy encourages individuals in learning the skills that are needed for navigating the web while posing questions to the contents that are posted.

 Nurturing a customary culture of skepticism among  the citizens and netizens towards the concept of information.

Verification of  the origin  of  such  news and affirmation  with  the parallel news,  should  be encouraged in the  schools and through  various education campaigns. One of the heartening examples being the Satyameva Jayate programme in schools.

In cases where there exists a danger to life / national security, legal interference must be explored.

Common sense, being the best defense.Citizens must gather news and information only from authenticated sources. After all, it is the citizens who are responsible for taking care, loving and building up the society while doing away with the plague of fake news.[4]

Hence, implementing  the  above mentioned prongs  shall  not only  act as supportable and viable reply to such  fake news, but  shall also help in striking a much needed  resonance  with free speech considerations.[5]

  Steps taken by regulatory bodies and Government

The government of West Bengal  has been working  upon  a new law  for  tackling  the plague of fake news  and  similar  posts on  the platform of social media, an initiative  that emerges  against the scenery  of such posts going viral and causing  predicament  and unrest in the country.[6] The telecom ministry has given its approval upon the rules pertaining to net neutrality that would no more treat internet as a luxury but rather a public utility, implying that Indians shall no longer have internet access from the zero-rated plans, which limit the accessing to only a few websites.[7]

Google has been focusing upon improving and stabilizing this entire situation. Not long ago, had the company declared the ‘Google News Initiative‘for improving the passage to reliable and  quality based news  that is available online.

Finally ,  for contending  the repercussions  of such fake news, the  successful measures ought to  target three  major areas comprising of  producers,  and distributors of information as well as  information consumption.[8]

  How can one spot a fake digital content?

Credits: IFLA

If one has a doubt regarding a published article, one must use Google for checking its    authenticity on the verified websites.

If one has an iota of doubt with regard to an image that has been published, one can simply verify the image context by a click on the “Search Google for image”. A mere click upon the image shall let one know about its authentic date of publishing, its contexts and etc.

Various online websites have extended their help in assisting people for detecting the contaminated digital content and for protecting journalism. Several fake news buster websites are available, some of them are —SM HOAX SLAYER (English),ALT NEWS (English),MEDIAVIGIL (Hindi).

Hence, the next time when one comes across a WhatsApp forwarded message or any such message on online platform which instigates a fuss and is highly objectionable, one must cross-examine it.[9]

  Conclusion:

In a nutshell, for eradicating the plague of fake news, the media houses in India ought to participate in these initiatives, while taking the responsibility to be judicious, logical and follow the path of transparency in providing the news online.

But the lion’s share lies upon the citizen.  Before we share anything on the social media platforms we must ask ourselves  – is it worth it? If such question raises a doubt, we must abstain from sharing such news. This might be perceived as a very simple habit  in  the process of being a sensible and  responsible citizen, but in the long run this habit will undoubtedly  sum up   to be immensely  valuable for safeguarding our democracy.[10]

  [1] https://ift.tt/2qWFNiw

[2] https://ift.tt/2FKs9ZU

[3] https://ift.tt/2qVdnWe

[4] https://ift.tt/2Fy1MpZ

[5] https://ift.tt/2KLxzpC

[6] https://ift.tt/2LSdxpO

[7] https://ift.tt/2qYipkz

[8] https://ift.tt/2FA4VWp

[9] https://ift.tt/2qZVqWn

[10] https://ift.tt/2Fw5qRk

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