I think that print tools are different than the internet in a substantial
manner in much the same way that databases are different from the
internet.  Books are static and will be the same over time.  One can
return to a site in a half hour and find change.  A New York Times article
with the same title may have changed content as the article has been
edited and updated.  A book index is a static collection of alphabetized
listing of topics that have content in one source.  A Google search often
provides a wild assortment of advertising, subtantial valuable content and
totally off topic sources.  Web pages have enticing flashing attractive
features, whether relevant to the sought content or not and much to
distract from the original purpose.  Personally, especially for novices
like high school students and college undergraduates, figuring out what is
wheat and what is chaff is much harder in a multi-media zoo like the
internet than in a stable box of traditional print media that provides a
much narrower range of happenings in its domain.  This is particularly
true in an academic world where many of the undergraduate college students
have no clue what a peer reviewed journal is, something perhaps about the
editor of the magazine having to wear prescription glasses perchance.
Like television, there is also the difficulty of being critical of glitzy
presentations that grab you with design, action and beauty compared to the
bland print counterparts given the inertia in the untrained mind of if it
is in print or in a book, it must be true.  Keep in mind how demagogues
sway minds with emotion and psychology in person, and think about the
effort that goes into making media like television, radio and the internet
appeal to and persuade the senses and one can see the etiology of
differences in what happens to those who use online websites that makes
the skills needed to develop evaluation ability different and greater than
those that may be required in print media.


Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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----------------------------------------

On Wed, 15 Feb 2006, David Rosen wrote:

> Jayne and others,
>
> Is there anything significantly and inherently different in the set
> of critical skills needed to evaluate information one gets from
> Internet from the information one gets from print and other visual
> media such as film and video.  Shouldn't we be teaching -- in
> Research Skills courses -- and in others, a range of skills for
> judging the quality of information which includes text, charts and
> graphs, images, audio and video in any medium?
>
> If there are an additional set of critical thinking skills which
> apply only to information from the Internet, could someone tell me
> what those are?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David J. Rosen
>
> On Feb 15, 2006, at 10:19 AM, Jayne, Kimberly wrote:
>
> > While the Internet is an invaluable resource for today's research
> > assignments, it does have its downfalls.  David mentioned the
> > network going
> > down as one problem.  A more serious problem is that students believe
> > everything on the Internet is true.  They do not realize that
> > ANYONE can put
> > ANYTHING on a web page and claim that it is true, accurate
> > information.
> > They need to be taught, perhaps in a Research Skills course, the
> > specific
> > skills necessary to finding accurate information on the Internet.
> > Many
> > educators require students to use both print and electronic resources,
> > thereby providing a print/accurate verification of the electronic
> > information.
> >
> > Kimberly Jayne, Staff Developer
> > Eastern Suffolk BOCES
> > 15 Andrea Road
> > Holbrook, NY 11741

<snip>


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