And these educators are not alone. The librarian is correct: the web is an unmediated publishing outlet. No trusted organization or individual reviews all of what's posted to make sure it is true and accurate. A recent controversy points out the dangers of unmediated sources of information.

Bogus Biography

In November John Seigenthaler Sr., a 78-year old retired journalist, read this about himself on the Web:

John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven...John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984. (From USA Today, 11/29/05)

None of this was true. In fact Seigenthaler was a colleague and pallbearer for Robert Kennedy and never lived in the USSR. He read these falsehoods on the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is used by many on the Internet, including many of our students. How could this happen?

Mediation

Wikipedia is (was) an example of an unmediated web site. It is an encyclopedia compiled by the voluntary contributions of hundreds of writers and editors. Anyone can write an article and post it to the Wikipedia; anyone else can come along later and edit the article. It's a kind of open, voluntary, work in progress. As such, it's the most up-to-date encyclopedia you'll find. But it's hardly error-free. It relies on its readers (all of whom may be editors) to keep it fresh and accurate. Very democratic. Very useful. But also very dangerous, if you don't understand what you are looking at.

It turns out that the offending biography of Mr. Seigenthaler was contributed by a 38-year-old deliveryman in Tennessee who posted it as a practical joke. It remained posted for four months, until a friend of Seigenthaler's saw it and replaced it with a an accurate article. So the self-policing system worked, but not fast enough to keep inaccurate information from finding its way into many reader's minds. (Wikipedia has since revised its methods to restrict editing and postings to registered members.)

Compare the process of developing the online Wikipedia with that of a traditional reference work such as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica, in fact, is compiled from the contributions of hundreds of writers and editors, chosen carefully for their expertise in a certain field. Their articles are carefully reviewed by other experts and editors before they appear in the print or online versions of the encyclopedia. This is an example of a highly mediated work -- lots of eyes and minds examine and modify each article on its way to publication. Thus many people around the world regard Britannica as a respected, authoritative source.

Authority

Your school library likely holds a copy of Britannica. And your librarian has vetted all of the materials that come into the library in one way or another to ensure that they are solid sources of information. The books and journals a student finds there are thus unlikely to contain the kind of false information that John Seigenthaler read.

Who approves what gets posted on the Internet? Even a respected site like Wikipedia, with its self-correcting system, is not immune from inaccuracy. On the other end of the spectrum are foolishly false sites such as DHMO, that describe water as a poison, or The Flat Earth Society, whose claims are evident in their name. In between are the blatantly biased sites such as the John Birch Society or the Communist Party USA. Anyone can post anything they want on the web.

And the sooner our students learn that latter fact, the better.

The Internet will never be like the school library. Nor should it be. It's value as a communication medium lies in its openness and diversity. But these same aspects make it problematic for our students. They, like many of us, were brought up to trust what we read in a library book, or in the newspaper, or on television. These communication channels were for the most part well-mediated, and so over the years developed a respectable authority.

Now comes the Internet, which appears to be a respectable source, but is in fact unmediated and clearly not all of it authoritative. And it's left to the Internaut (Internet users) to separate the wheat from the chaff, to determine the respectability of each site. Our job as teachers is to prepare our students to make that determination.

Thinking Skills

The best way to do that is to expose them to the foolish as well as the factual sites, the biased as well as the balanced sources. Design lessons that cause them to review sites on both extremes of an issue. Have them design and post (temporarily and locally) blatantly false sites to show them how it's done. Have them search for authoritative, respectable sites, and talk about how a site might build such a reputation. Show them how to check facts in a variety of sources. Have them interview older folks about what sources they consider authoritative, and why.

Your students will not be alone in their investigations. Soon after the Wikipedia controversy erupted, Nature magazine (very authoritative, in my view) conducted a study to compare the accuracy of Britannica and Wikipedia. You can read their findings online. And draw your own conclusions.

The emergence of the Internet focuses the need to teach our students to think for themselves, at an earlier age, and with deeper understanding. To be skeptical. To take things, especially what they read on the Internet, with a grain of salt. To realize that all they read on the Web, or see on television, or hear from their friends, is not necessarily true or accurate or good for them. And to develop the skills to determine which sources have authority.

And the Internet itself may be the best source for lessons that develop these skills.

For more information see the interactive lesson and teacher's guide for Misinformation: Truth or Spoof in the Internet Smarts section of this site.

References:

• USA Today Op-Ed, "A false Wikipedia 'biography'"
• Seigenthaler and Wikipedia - Lessons and Questions: A Case Study on the Veracity of the "Wiki" concept at journalism.org