An OER which highlights the importance of information literacy in this day and age of the fourth information revolution and shares some of the tips and tricks accumulated by a distance learner at the University of the Philippines Open University.

Outline of the Content:

1. Home
2. What is Information Literacy?
3. Information Literacy and Online Learning
4. Finding High-Quality Information Online
5. Wikipedia for Academics
6. Sharing Your Works Online
7. Recommended Resources
8. About the Author

We’re in an age of information overload. Learn how media literacy principles can help you make sense of your digital media environment.

The internet is full of false information and ads. Sometimes it can be challenging to decipher the validity of content. It is important to learn how to critically evaluate online material for several reasons: you want to know what type of information is trustworthy online, you want to be an informed digital citizen, and you want to ensure that the information that you are using for a school assignment is factual. The purpose of “Two Truths and a Lie Online” is to teach you how to critically evaluate online resources so that you can be both an informed consumer and producer of digital content.

In this update to the 2008 standards, Washington is adopting the 2016 Technology Standards for Students
released by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). These standards were developed
collaboratively with teachers, administrators, subject matter experts, state and national associations, and
stakeholders in educational technology. Teams of Washington teachers, technology integration
specialists, and teacher-librarians have reviewed these standards to ensure they effectively meet the
needs of Washington students.

These standards emphasize the ways technology can be used to amplify and transform learning and
teaching, and they resonate with our state’s aspiration to empower connected learners in a connected
world. In addition, they complement statewide efforts to enhance instruction in digital citizenship and
media literacy, which are critical elements of preparing our students for careers, post-secondary
aspirations, and beyond.

This is an unabashedly practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based techniques that can get you closer to the truth on the web more quickly.

We will show you how to use date filters to find the source of viral content, how to assess the reputation of a scientific journal in less than five seconds, and how to see if a tweet is really from the famous person you think it is or from an impostor.

We’ll show you how to find pages that have been deleted, figure out who paid for the web site you’re looking at, and whether the weather portrayed in that viral video actual matches the weather in that location on that day. We’ll show you how to check a Wikipedia page for recent vandalism, and how to search the text of almost any printed book to verify a quote. We’ll teach you to parse URLs and scan search result blurbs so that you are more likely to get to the right result on the first click. And we’ll show you how to avoid baking confirmation bias into your search terms.

The web gives us many strategies and tactics and tools, which, properly used, can get students closer to the truth of a statement or image within seconds. For some reason we have decided not to teach students these specific techniques. As many people have noted, the web is both the largest propaganda machine ever created and the most amazing fact-checking tool ever invented. But if we haven't taught our students those capabilities is it any surprise that propaganda is winning?

This is an unabashedly practical guide for the student fact-checker. It supplements generic information literacy with the specific web-based techniques that can get you closer to the truth on the web more quickly.