by Here’s a cute little wrinkle in the Wikipedia story. CIA, FBI Computers Used for Wikipedia Edits. Apparently, the FBI and CIA are “fixing” the history of the Iraq War and the US prison in Guantanemo Bay before the history is even written. The Bush Administration has never hesitated from changing online press conference transcripts or “tinkering” with the ERIC and What Works databases. These folks sure are through!
How will you explain this to your computer literacy students?
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.
A reiteration of Stephen Downes post – Does seeing what changes are actually being made by the political spin machine help us to get a greater understanding of how all types of media is manipulated by governments. I’ll add this to my media literacy curriculum next year.
One need only watch CNN. In editors and producers we trust? I wish there was a CNN BS Scanner.
(Glad your writing online where Canadians can actually respond 😉 )
While my students love to go to the Wikipedia, I am very upfront about the fact that anyone can contribute and that you have to understand the motives of those that do. You simply cannot trust everything you read there. You need to find other sources to back up your information. Whether it is the CIA, the FBI, or some 15-year-old kid, anyone can change information.
And Web 2.0 curriculm lends itself to a little fun to go along with learning. You’ve been tagged- check out my post:
http://www.denblogs.com/digital_storytelling/2007/08/tag-im-it.html
–Joe Brennan