Thing 18: Reflective Practice (Applying for Critical Thinker Badge)

The third segment of this course explored the concept of critical thinking from various angles.  Thing 14 introduced us to personal information management.  Although it contained interesting detail, it seemed an odd fit as its focus was on organizing rather than evaluating information.  I appreciate that an orderly arrangement of facts aids critical thinking, but on balance Thing 14 may perhaps have been better suited for the Online Communicator segment, particularly as there was a certain overlap between it and Thing 12 on collaborative tools.

I was really excited about Thing 15 on evaluating information. It took a close look at Wikipedia, an information resource that I like and use a lot, and explained how Wikipedia articles are created and edited, and how they can be used as a tool for teaching critical assessment skills to students.  I had always wanted to learn more about Wikipedia, and learning how to edit and contribute to it has been the highlight of this course for me so far.  At the time I couldn't find any articles to edit but I have worked on Wikipedia since and made a couple of small edits here and there.  Wikipedia is often disregarded as an information source but I have always found it a great starting point for learning activities, and working through Thing 15 has only increased my respect for it.  If my work role involved teaching critical thinking to students, this is definitely a tool I would use.

I was a bit sorry to see however that Thing 15 was the only one in this segment that dealt with critical thinking, or, to put it in another way, that Wikipedia was the only aspect that was explored.  In this era of fake news and misinformation, the ability to evaluate facts and discern accurate information from biased or downright false is crucial, not least for those of us who work in information professions.  The internet is an invaluable source of information, but it is also a sticky spider's web that can trap you.  Tracking cookies follow you online activities, resulting in targeted advertising; YouTube remembers the videos you watched and makes recommendations based on your choices - the examples are endless.  This sort of insidious manipulation can be dangerous.  If you hold strong views on certain topics, you will find that the Internet will feed that view, and in no time you will be solely focusing on articles that strengthen it and ignoring those that offer an alternative one.  One way of protecting against this is by not using the social media as your primary source of information, and, if you read online newspapers, making sure you understand the possible political or other affiliation or bias they represent.

Fake news a la 1894

I had just finished working on Thing 16 on digital footprints when the Cambridge Analytica scandal began to make headlines, revealing that personal data of some 50 million Facebook users had been captured and improperly used to influence the 2016 presidential election in the US.  It is one thing to get into trouble over an ill-considered tweet or Facebook post, it's quite another to come to terms with the fact that personal information you have supplied in good faith to a social media site can be collected and analysed without your knowledge or consent, and then used to manipulate you.  As a consequence, people in their thousands have been deleting their Facebook pages.  Those who do not wish to take such drastic measures should carefully scrutinize their security settings.

The worst thing is that the Cambridge Analytica scandal is probably not the only instance of this sort of abuse, it is simply the one that has come into public scrutiny.  Thing 16 made some very valuable timely points about internet security.  I have always been a cautious, even reluctant, user of social media, and rarely if ever provide personal information to websites.  The revelations of the past week, coupled with reminders of Mark Zuckerberg's references to Facebook users as "dumb f***s" back in 2009 have done nothing to relax my attitude.  I was really pleased with Thing 16 and can only hope that when the next Rudai course is rolled out the issue of personal data and internet security will be given even greater emphasis.

Thing 17 provided information on hosting sites that allow you to share your professional work with a wider community.  While I rather enjoyed exploring the sites to which it introduced us, this is another element which I feel would have been better suited to the Online Networker segment.

The Critical Thinker segment was interesting and thought-provoking, and touched in a timely manner on some very serious issues which affect us all.  Never did I think I would live to see the day when presidents use Twitter to hurl abuse, when lying is presented as "alternative facts", and when politicians blatantly insist that truth doesn't matter, only their voters' perception of truth.  It has been heartening to see a gradual emergence of common sense in the midst of this chaos, and I feel increasingly reassured that truth will continue to matter.  More importantly, we as information professionals have a key role in ensuring that information based on facts, not on opinions, wins the day.

Image by Frederick Burr Opper on Wikimedia Commons