Thing 15 - Staying Informed

Click here to visit my West Mi Ed Tech public page

I set up a Netvibes aggregator to go with my website -- West Mi Ed Tech. I've found this whole 21 Things process to be great for my work. Even thought I pretty familiar with tech tools, I've really expanded my toolkit and forced myself to try new things. I've already got a few aggregators that I use--google reader & Symbaloo. So I took this opportunity to start something fresh, just for my WMET. I love it. I was able to link my new WMET google calendar as well as a generic twitter feed for edtech. 

I chose the M-Live education news link and the Education Week Michigan news to make it specific to our area. I also added a couple of blogs I like; Blue Skunk and iear. And a few other generic news outlets; Ed Week Digital Directions, Google Ed Tech and Tech Crunch.

Of course it's one more thing to maintain, but my students will get good use out of it. It can be difficult to know what to pick or follow online. This netvibes page gives the beginner a nice one-stop source for getting started tapping into ed tech. I plan to add / remove content as I discover new items. I'm thinking I could create a new tab just for podcasts or just iOS info. 

As a teacher, this would be a great way to collect and share information for class projects, units, bell ringers etc. I found a few good examples for using netvibes in the classroom. The Thinking Stick site taught me how to share my page (which Netvibes didn't make very clear; insisting users need a Netvibes account to access a Netvibes page -- not true!)

Thinking Stick

Alexander Sperl
Langwitches 

Thing 7.1 -Digital Citizenship -Hoax Sites

visit the site

An island just for dogs?!? According to the stats box on the front page, almost 4000 dogs call Dog Island home.Really?

Bogus / Hoax Websites can be hard to crack. But the creator of Dog Island (www.thedogisland.com) makes it pretty easy by including a disclaimer right on the page footer. 

The advertising on this site makes it look even more credible. Visitors might think because there are actual companies and links to Google Ads, they've discovered a credible curiosity. But just because a Website draws enough traffic to make it valuable to advertisers, does not mean the content is legit.

visit the site

The Pacific Tree Octopus Website could easily fool a gullible, quick-to-click student.

The author presents in a tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic sort of humor that could easily be mis-construed by the less sophisticated student. He also links to actual credible Websites with some actual unusual creatures (such as the Nature Consrvancy) However if you read the FAQs you realize the site is named for the author, and has no real purpose. A disclaimer of sorts appears on the front page of this site as well, but is a bit less obvious than the Dog Island disclaimer: "This site is not associated with any school or educational organization, other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society."

Using the Joyce Valenza CARDDSS criteria for Website evaluation is a great way for kids and teachers to learn more about how Websites are created and what to look for when searching for credible resources. 

This was a fun activity. Even though I consider myself a veteran Internet user, it was eye-opening to see how real some of these sites appear. I can see in my mind exactly which of my students would fall for these, even with the aid of the eval tool. I can imagine that they would exert their own bias on their analysis. If they think the site is for real, they might ignore or twist evidence to the contrary to make it fit.