Michele Kirschenbaum, Author at EasyBib Blog

Video Lesson: Facts, Opinions & Reasoned Judgments

Michele Kirschenbaum — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 20:21:14 +0000

Length: 1:02

Recognizing the difference between fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment statements is an essential skill, one which is often touched upon and reviewed in school. Students need to be able to distinguish between these three types of statements in order to write persuasive pieces, develop proper theses, communicate and engage in debates, and critically analyze information.

If you’re looking for a short video to refresh your students’ thinking on the topic, share Facts, Opinions, and Reasoned Judgments: What’s the Difference with them.

In just over a minute, your students will learn:

The three different ways information can be presented (facts, opinions, reasoned judgments)
Definitions for facts, opinions, and reasoned judgments
Examples and explanations for each statement type

The video is linked here.

If your students decide to use facts, opinions, and reasoned judgments from outside sources to back up the claims in their writing and research projects, remind them to make citations! EasyBib.com’s citation generator creates citations in MLA style, APA style, and thousands of other citation styles. In less than a minute, students can responsibly credit other authors’ works. Remind your students of this important step in the research process.

The post Video Lesson: Facts, Opinions & Reasoned Judgments appeared first on EasyBib Blog.

Video Lesson: Box & Bullet Method of Note Taking

Michele Kirschenbaum — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 22:10:24 +0000

It’s a never ending search trying to find clever hacks and new techniques to make the note taking process easier for our students. Many websites and apps offer features and tools to help stay on task and organized. One tried and true note taking method that has lasted the test of time? The good ol’ Box and Bullet Method.

The Box and Bullet Method is a simple note taking strategy. There are many other types of note taking strategies, such as mapping and outlining, but the box and bullet method is one of the easiest to use.

This note taking strategy requires students and researchers to extract the main ideas and supporting details from sources. Each main idea is placed in a box and the supporting details are written directly below, next to bullet points.

If you’d like to show your students the power of the Box and Bullet Method, check out our brief, informative video.

Video linked here

In just over a minute, your students will learn how to:

Organize their paper or document
Extract the central ideas and supporting details from a source
Handle longer texts

Help your students stay organized and successful throughout the research process by sharing our Box and Bullet Method video with them. Don’t forget to remind your students to cite their sources! Whether they’re citing in MLA style, APA, or another style, EasyBib.com has all of the tools needed to create citations.

The post Video Lesson: Box & Bullet Method of Note Taking appeared first on EasyBib Blog.

Identifying Fake News: An Infographic and Educator Resources

Michele Kirschenbaum — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 21:05:12 +0000

We recently posted, “10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article,” which highlighted key items to look for on a website when determining its credibility. The infographic found here summarizes the content from the blog post and students can use it as a guide when using news sources in research. Post, print, or share it with your students or others!

Looking for other resources related to website credibility? We’ve listed some of our favorites below the infographic!

Channel One News: Lesson Plan: How to Spot Fake News

This lesson plan, by Channel One News (a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt company), includes discussion questions, a writing activity, and a video that can be shown to students to help them understand that they shouldn’t believe everything that they read or hear. It highlights fake information posted on social media sites and also discusses how “official” looking news sites could actually be fake.

The News Literacy Project’s Ten Questions for Fake News Detection

This checklist can be distributed to students to help them determine if a news article is fake or not. We love how they included red flags throughout the checklist. Too many red flags circled? This means that the website the student is rating most likely contains false information!

Websites to Test Your Students

Have you seen our blog post, “How Savvy Are Your Students?: 7 Fake Websites to Really Test Their Evaluation Skills.”?

The websites listed on this blog post all contain incorrect information. See if your students are able to put the pointers from the infographic to the test and catch on that these sites are not credible.

Skills and Strategies: Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources

This page includes the TED-Ed videos, How to Choose Your News, and How False News Can Spread. It also features discussion questions for students to answer, as well as an activity where students are asked to impose a 48-hour news blackout.

Related blog posts:

The post Identifying Fake News: An Infographic and Educator Resources appeared first on EasyBib Blog.

How Savvy are Your Students?: 7 Fake Websites to Really Test Their Evaluation Skills

Michele Kirschenbaum — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 04:46:38 +0000

Looking to test your students’ capabilities at figuring out if a website is real or not? Use these fake websites to help, but be careful! Looks may deceive you! Some of these sites are tougher to catch than others.

GenoChoice: Create Your Own Genetically Healthy Child Online

GenoChoice gives parents the opportunity to genetically modify their future child’s DNA to prevent diseases and health issues. It’s essentially a service that allows parents to create the “perfect child.” While there aren’t many links on the site, GenoChoice states that it is affiliated with “RYT Hospital”. Upon clicking on the RYT Hospital link, viewers are directed to a hospital website that is quite official looking at first glance.

The giveaway? Many of the links do not work, both on GenoChoice and RYT Hospital’s site. In addition, RYT Hospital cannot be found on a map or a simple Google search. There is also a feature on the site where readers can place their thumb on the screen for a DNA scan. This is not possible!

Buy an Ancestor Online

Ever wish you were related to a famous person? Have you ever tried to produce your family tree, but came up empty handed? Buy an Ancestor Online provides you with the ability to purchase an ancestor, “complete with authenticating documents.” With daily hot deals and monthly specials, this site can provide you with the missing link in your family tree that you’ve always dreamed of.

The giveaway? The site not only looks outdated, but it was last updated in 2012. There is also very little information on the founder, Bob Fulkerson, and the site is maintained by the “Losing Proposition Company.” The real giveaway? Reviews placed on the site by so-called “expert genealogists,” state that it’s all a scam and it will bring in some “REAL suckers.”

Dog Island

A beautiful sanctuary for our four-legged friends, Dog Island is home to 2,500 dogs. All are able to roam free and enjoy a peaceful life among their furry friends. With man-made caves as shelters, plenty of rabbits and other wildlife to feed on, and separate islands for dogs of similar sizes, families can send their dogs to Dog Island to live happily in this oasis, for free.

The giveaway? While a Google search shows that Dog Island is the name of a real island off the coast of Florida, numerous grammatical errors throughout the Frequently Asked Questions page raises red flags about the validity of the website. Want to visit their main office? Due to protesters who oppose Dog Island, “we’ve had to make our land office a maze to get to.” The directions to the office involve solving a cryptic puzzle.

Mankato, Minnesota

Nestled in the heart of the midwest, Mankato Minnesota boasts itself as a “hidden vacation Mecca.” It sits on the “Sclare/Far Fissure,” which is a phenomenon that turns the air temperature to a 70 degree paradise…all year long. With tons of pages and links to back up their claim and five-star reviews from newspapers, this site could easily convince someone about this magical paradise in Minnesota.

The giveaway? The site looks outdated, with colorful, flashy images and banners. A Google search of Mankato, Minnesota pulls up the city’s official homepage, which shows that it is currently 32 degrees, a far cry from the 70 degrees that the hoax site claims.

The Ova Prima Foundation

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The Ova Prima Foundation is on a mission to find out. This non-profit agency’s site is quite convincing. All links work and the site includes information regarding the mission, history, and abstracts and citations of research papers associated with the foundation. There are even lesson plans for educators who are looking to teach chicken or the egg theories.

The giveaway? Doing a quick search on the author and the company pulls up a ton of results showcasing that website as a hoax. In addition, the term, “ovaprimatological,” is used throughout, which is not a real word. While it’s convincing to see the research abstracts and citations, all are missing dates.

All About Explorers

This beautifully designed website seems like the perfect place for elementary and middle school students to find information about famous explorers. With many of the world’s most famous explorers featured, this site is easy for students to navigate, includes lesson plans for teachers, and information about the authors.

The giveaway? All About Explorers’ mission is to teach students to check their facts with a second source, so the site is riddled with tons of incorrect information. It states that, “Christopher Columbus was born in 1951 in Sydney, Australia.” and that Juan Ponce de Leon, “was hired by Revlon, a cosmetic company, to search for the Fountain of Youth (a body of water that would enable you to look young forever).”

In addition to incorrect information about the explorers, the biographies about the authors contain numerous inaccuracies. Their chief researcher worked at the University of Demiglace-on-Seine, which isn’t a real school and it states that the webmaster has, “visited six of the seven major continents and a few minor ones as well.”

Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Probably the toughest website to catch as a fake, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site is beautifully designed, all links work, and the author’s information is available with a link to his regularly updated blog. There is even an online store where readers can purchase mugs, shirts, and stickers, all displaying images of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

The giveaway? A quick search of the affiliated school, “Kelvnic University,” and the “Wild Haggis Conservation Society,” brings up quite a few websites that state them as fake. In addition, the author states that sasquatch is a natural predator to the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Related blog posts:

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10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article

Michele Kirschenbaum — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:05:59 +0000

For many of us, 2016 is going down as a year to forget. Election upsets, Zika, the Syrian crisis, and unfortunately tons of fake news about all of the above and everything in between.

Denzel Washington was recently quoted as saying, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” So what should you do? You want to be informed, but a good deal of the information out there is incorrect or biased. Here are some things to keep an eye out for when reading a news article.

1. Is the article missing citations, references, or links?

Links and citations allow us to easily access, read, and explore more about the information found in the article. Authors include references and links to validate their story, so if an article is missing links and references, it is a huge red flag.

Many big name news sites, such as CNN, do not include links or citations, but other sites do. The articles that you read should look similar to this one from LiveScience.com’s article, “Why Do We Fall for Fake News?” Check out the hyperlinks throughout the article. They help validate the information that the author wrote about.

2. Is the author’s name missing?

An article without an author’s name is another red flag. Most authors who put the time in to develop a well-researched news story like having their name attached to it. When an article is missing the name of the individual who wrote it, the reader isn’t sure whether it’s a trusted journalist who wrote the article or an angry teenager. Only consider trusting articles with an author’s name attached to it.

3. If the author’s name is listed, are they a trustworthy individual?

Do a Google search on the author’s name to find their occupation and locate other articles that the author has composed. Is the author an expert in their field? Have they written other well-researched articles? Do a quick background check on the author to determine their credibility.

4. What can you find in the “About Us” section of the website?

On the top or bottom of most websites, you should see a section titled “About Us.” This section should give you a brief run-down of the mission and goals of the site. Do they aspire to post trustworthy news? Do they have an authoritative team of journalists and writers? Or is it a website that allows the general public to post articles? Reading about the website that hosts the article can help you determine if they post trustworthy sources.

5. Are there spelling or grammatical errors found in the text?

Authors tend to read and re-read their articles numerous times prior to posting. In addition, they often have others proofread their work. When spelling or grammatical errors are present, this shows that the author might have hastily posted the information or they may not be an authoritative expert in the content that they’re writing about.

6. Are there any direct quotes that are incorrectly used or taken out of context?

Copy and paste a quote from the article into Google’s search bar. Are you able to find that same quote on another website or did your search produce a quote that is a bit different than the one in the article? Writers sometimes modify quotes to change their meaning and to make their content persuade you into believing something that isn’t 100% true.

7. Can you find a similar article on the Internet?

Do a simple keyword search on Google for a similar article. If you’re unable to find anything remotely similar, chances are that the author didn’t do their research, made up much of the information in the article, or are fully sharing their opinion on a topic – not factual news. Stick to trusting news articles that have similar pieces found on the Internet.

8. Does the article only showcase one side of an argument?

News articles are essentially meant to inform you by showing all sides of a topic; the good, the bad, and the ugly. If an article only features one viewpoint, the reader should remind themselves that they’re not seeing the full picture. Be cautious of news articles that only report one side of the story.

9. Does the headline not match the content of the article?

A headline can do more than provide a snippet of what the entire piece is about; it can also persuade us to believe something before we even read the article. Authors sometimes fabricate their headlines, knowing that you might walk away without reading the article and believing their claim. If the headline causes your eyes to pop out of your head, read the entire article first before deciding to trust the information or not.

10. Is the story completely outrageous?

If the story is unbelievable, chances are it is! Trust your gut instinct and check for many of items discussed in this article.

How can you prevent the spread of fake news?

If you believe something is incorrect, simply do not share it with others. Sharing fake news articles pushes them higher up in search result pages, causing others to come across them quickly and believing the content.

Some sites, such as Facebook, allow you to flag posts that are harmful or inappropriate. If you believe that a news story is false, make sure to report it to the host so they can take it down if necessary.

We know, it takes time to double check the information in news articles, but be an informed citizen and find out if what you’re reading and sharing is factual or not.

References:

Richter, Greg. “Denzel Washington: Media Should ‘Tell the Truth,’ Stop ‘BS’” Newsmax, 6 Dec. 2016, www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/media-truth-Denzel-Washington-BS/2016/12/06/id/762575/.

Sundar, S. Shyam. “Why Do We Fall for Fake News?” LiveScience, Purch, 9 Dec. 2016, www.livescience.com/57151-why-we-fall-for-fake-news.html.

Konnikova, Maria. “How Headlines Change the Way We Think.” The New Yorker, Conde Nast, 17 Dec. 2014, www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/headlines-change-way-think.

Create bibliographies like the one above with our EasyBib citation service.