Just In Time Lesson Two - Good Sources

Click the image below to see the lesson slideshow

JIT Lesson Two Summary

There are many different sources and versions of tips for finding good digital sources.  One of the sources concerning fake articles provided eleven tips for recognizing fake news stories such as photoshopped pictures and broken links (Schulten & Brown, 2017).  Another source from the Harvard summer school website cut those tips to an easy four.  This one had many of the same ideas, but added the idea of investigating a fact-checking website like Snopes or Politifact (Nagler, 2018).

After looking at many different places for tips on finding credible sources, I have decided to use the one from Meriam Library provided in this class’s materials.  It seemed to be the most concise and rich resource. Therefore, I built my mini lesson around the acronym of T.R.A.A.P. or Timeliness, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose (See Below).  It should be noted that in the original source, timeliness was replaced by the word currency (Meriam Library, 2019), but I have decided to use the word timeliness. I am directing this lesson toward fifth graders at my school.  I had doubts, not that they would remember the acronym C.R.A.A.P, but rather that they would be able to focus on the important parts of it.

This lesson was created thinking about the ISTE standard Three for students.  This standard revolves around students being “Knowledge Constructors” (ISTE, 2019, np).  This lesson has the goal of teaching students about where to curate good sources and uses real-life examples of both good and bad sources.  This fits in well with standards 3a-d from ISTE.

JIT Lesson Two Outline

  1. Introduction to TRAAP (3 min)

    • Timeliness

    • Relevance

    • Authority

    • Accuracy

    • Purpose

  2. Timeliness-How current is the information? (7 min)

    • Examine current article from the New York Times.

    • What about your topic?

      • Does it need a current source?

      • Is an older source ok?

  3. Relevance-How well does the source fit your needs? (5 mins)

    • How to Evaluate Sources for Relevance video

      • Primary and secondary sources.

      • Three questions about source relevance.

      • Strategies to find relevant sources.

  4. Authority-What is the source of the information? (15 minutes)

    • Who is the author, sponsor, or publisher?

      • Examine a native advertising example.

    • Is the author qualified to write on the topic?

      • What makes the author an expert?

      • Where does the author work? 

      • Can you find more by that author or contact them?

    • What can you learn from the URL?

      • Good source URL mini quiz

      • What to look for in a URL.

        • Https vs http in a URL

        • Differences in domains.

  5. Accuracy-How reliable, truthful, and correct is the information? (15 min)

    • What about the info?

      • Where does the information come from?

      • Is the information supported by evidence?

      • Can you verify the information in another source?

      • Does the tone seem unbiased and free of emotion?

      • Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors?

    • Examine Christoper Columbus explorer page.

  6. Purpose-What is the reason the source exists? (10 min)

    • What is the purpose?

      • Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade?

      • Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda?

      • Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?

      • Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases?

    • Think, pair and Share for 5 minutes about The Onion article.

References

Anonymous. (2017, October 17). RoseArt Recalls Colored Pencils After Hundreds Of Kids Sucked Into Magical Drawing World. The Onion. Retrieved from https://www.theonion.com/roseart-recalls-colored-pencils-after-hundreds-of-kids-1839139465

Christopher Columbus. (2017, March 18). Retrieved from https://www.allaboutexplorers.com/explorers/columbus/.

Coiro, J. (2014, April 7). Teaching adolescents how to evaluate the quality of online information. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/evaluating-quality-of-online-info-julie-coiro

Donald, B. (2016, November 22). Stanford researchers find students have trouble judging the credibility of information online. Retrieved from https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find-students-have-trouble-judging-credibility-information-online

Gregoire, J. (2013, December 11). Native Advertising Examples & Publishers. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://tinuiti.com/blog/ecommerce/native-advertising-examples/

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2019). The ISTE Standards. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards.

Meriam Library. (2019). Is this source or information good? Retrieved from https://library.csuchico.edu/help/source-or-information-good.

Murphy, J. (2016, March 9). Electric - 5 Minute Countdown. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTczn5RUgnk&t=5s

Nagler, C. (2018, November 1). 4 Tips for Spotting a Fake News Story. Retrieved from https://www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/4-tips-spotting-fake-news-story.

Preston, E. (2020, January 9). Parrots Show Off Selfless Behavior. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/science/parrots-selflessness-help.html

Schulten, K., & Brown, A. C. (2017, January 19). Evaluating Sources in a ‘Post-Truth’ World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/learning/lesson-plans/evaluating-sources-in-a-post-truth-world-ideas-for-teaching-and-learning-about-fake-news.html

Smale, M. (2013). Evaluating strategies for evaluating sources. Information literacy @ CUNY. Retrieved from https://infolit.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2013/02/13/evaluating-strategies-for-evaluating-sources/

Teaching Without Frills. (2018, September 23). Writing Videos for Kids: How to Evaluate Sources for Relevance [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9uWqJBd1N8.