"Calamity" Jane Austin

by Janice Cooper

A very earnest 9th grade student dutifully searched the Internet for information on her author and incorporated the facts she located into a painstakingly hand-lettered, colorful poster.

“Calamity” Jane Austin wrote such classic novels as Pride and Precipice, Fence and Fencibility, Winchester Park, and the ever-popular Northanger Abilene. She was better known, perhaps, for her colorful life as a guerilla leader during the Texas War of Independence, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Republic of Texas, and an agent on the underground railroad. . . .

Had my student evaluated her (sole!) “Calamity Jane Austin” website, this satiric hoax site could have been included in her Jane Austen project as a humorous aside rather than as her primary research.

I am a library media specialist at a four-year, academic high school in suburban New Jersey. Information fluency skills are implemented across the curriculum for a mix of 1200, primarily Caucasian and Asian, students. More than 95% of students go on to 4-year colleges. I teach Information fluency skills in Business Education classes. All freshmen in the Computer Inputting and Applications classes spend one-hour class periods with me learning Google ‘Advanced Search’ techniques. The business teachers and I plan to develop additional search and evaluation sessions. Our Library Media Center Website [ http://www2.nvnet.org/nvhs/] is a forum for independent access to information fluency tutorials and tools. On the “Information Skills” page, a variety of interactive tools, like IMSA’s Wizard Tools, are linked for point-of-need learning.I have found that most students, literally, do not know what they are missing. They are often unaware that http://www.mypyramid.com is a hoax site ridiculing the new food pyramid because it mimics the typeface, graphics, and URL of the official site @ http://www.mypyramid.gov. Many high school students simply do not have life experiences or general knowledge to make critical comparisons. Topics about which they are passionately interested, and incredibly knowledgeable, are unlikely to be research topics (i.e., video games, current fashion). The nature of the World Wide Web exacerbates this with sites that range from innovative to malicious, in ever-increasing numbers. Young man holds globe and is wraped in internet connections

“Web 2.0” sometimes called the “Read / Write Web” promotes sharing of information and makes it easy for anyone to post content on the web. This adds exponentially to the ready wealth of information and misinformation on the Internet. “Too much” information is frequently more frustrating and confusing than “not enough.” Info-glut may prompt novice searchers to simply accept the first resources listed on in the results of popular search engines.

Evaluating information is an essential information literacy skill and the ability to evaluate websites is critical. Ironically, the two resources my students turn to first need careful evaluation guidance: Google and Wikipedia. Both are dynamic resources reflecting the engaging nature and richness of the Internet, as well as its quirks. Are Google’s relevancy ratings reliable indicators of the relevance, or the accuracy or currency of the listed sites’ content? (A recent Google search for anabolic steroids reveals that one of the top ten most relevant hits is a site selling steroids.) Is Wikipedia’s editing policy a reliable measure of the editors’ authenticity or the entries’ accuracy? (Last summer, Joel Seigenthaler’s falsely-edited Wikipedia biography, copied and pasted into Answers.com and Reference.com without fact-checking, made the news.) Still, both sources can be useful for research -- for topic overviews, idiosyncratic insights, and vibrant discussions on the latest technologies -- when the information is carefully evaluated.

Three figures hold large letters saying WWW

Simple evaluation tips, like “the ABC’s of Websites” can help students select among sites returned in Google searches: Accuracy, Authority, Bias-free, Coverage, and Currency (Accessibility and Appropriateness might also be included).

IMSA’s Evaluation Wizard walks students through the steps of rigorous evaluation, offers explanations and mini-tutorials, and provides a crisp, personal printout at the end of the process. Such interactive tools provide opportunities for novice evaluators to use the power of the Internet to harness its potential.

On the Internet, there are as many perspectives on a given topic as there are facets in a housefly’s eye. Can there be a stable, objective, generally-accepted truth about every topic? Perhaps what my students need is to learn how to build, redevelop, and practice evolving evaluation skills on an ever-widening array of disparate sources, so they can create their own truths, based on the best information.

Janice Cooper has been a Library Media Specialist at Northern Valley Regional High School since 1983, first in the Demarest building and now in Old Tappan. She received her BA in English at Kenyon College and her MLS at Columbia University’s School of Library Service. She earned certificates in information management and educational technology from Columbia and Rutgers Universities, respectively. Cooper is currently enrolled in an online certificate program in E-Learning and Online Teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Married to the AP History teacher in her high school, Cooper has two young sons -- who are learning to evaluate information on the Internet!