I loved this week’s math class because I love data—not just mean, median, and mode but also the presentation and evaluation of data. We’re bombarded with it, and it makes sense to help students learn how to understand it. But I think any lesson in using it should be accompanied by a lesson in how to determine the credibility of data, and how to use data responsibly.
When I examine and present data, I can choose my focus. I can, for example, make an assumption and then seek out data that fit my assumption, ruling out data and context that do not fit that assumption. Someone else could take that same data and do the same thing—but with a different focus.
I recently taught a lesson in my dyad about how to gauge the trustworthiness of online sources, but the basics of it apply to any source. Who is responsible for the information? What does it say? How is it presented? And why does the source present the information? This may be too much for elementary school students to digest, but by middle school, when kids are researching and writing papers, they can and should start evaluating the quality of the information they use and pass on to others. If I were to repeat the math-class activity with my own students, I would add a component—perhaps my own misrepresentation of a data set—to urge caution when finding a story out of data.
It is ALWAYS good to teach digital literacy skills! Even if it is "too much for them". You can never start literacy too young and questioning the sources for data is definitely a skill required to be digitally literate.
ReplyDeleteIt is important to question sources but it goes beyond that. The sources on the Gapminder website are pretty credible -- the point is that you can find what appears to be a relationship among different variables if you look hard enough but does that really mean a relationship exists or is it coincidence? confounding? etc. This is a pretty sophisticated concept and will require careful teaching.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of "credibility" has always tied me up a bit because it can be subjective. I remember having a lengthy discussion with my science professor about the reliability of one scientist's online data on the rate of global warming versus another authority's virtual data. It seems to me that unless I've actually worked beside the scientists in the field, I have no way of knowing which viewpoint is most credible.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I agree that students need to learn how to gauge the trustworthiness of online sources. Being a true skeptic at heart helps weed out fraudulent reporting. I don't know about you, but I see dishonest e-mail messages in my in-box on a weekly basis. Sadly, some of them come from my relatives and even sadder is when they get duped into sending money abroad. I think some of the snake oil salespeople have moved to the virtual world and consumers should beware. Thanks for your thought-provoking post.