Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers
The book has a nice table of contents that clearly outlines the topics included. It covers a wide range of useful techniques and tips for web literacy, but is incomplete.
There are spelling errors within the text, but overall I did not find there to be any issues in the content.
I believe the text to be up-to-date, but foresee it needing to be updated frequently since the internet is constantly changing and evolving. I think the text will be easy to update or add new techniques to the existing ones. I don't see the issue of misinformation on the internet going away in the future, so a book of this nature will continue to be valuable.
The text is written in a conversational tone, making it very easy to read and understand. I think it is very accessible to students and does a good job of explaining any terminology it brings in.
I did not see any issue with consistency.
The text consisted of many small sections, making it very easy to read in small bits and to jump to the information you want to get across to students.
The book started with a brief introduction to why it was needed, moved on to good habits for web-literacy, and then started breaking it down to small, specific techniques to utilize while fact-checking. I think this made it flow really well, and made sense.
There were some issues of pages with headings only, because the image was on the next page.
There were many spelling mistakes. The book is not complete, as indicated towards the end with placeholders for future content. The author could benefit from having someone edit the book, as there is no reason the current content can't be polished.
There was not opportunity for this due to the nature of the text. I believe misinformation on the internet is a large issue in our culture, and will continue to be, so a textbook of this nature is valuable.
“As many people have noted, the web is both the largest propaganda machine ever created and The most amazing fact-checking tool ever invented.” – Mike Caulfield, pages 3-4.
I teach a weekend enrichment course covering the basics of critical thinking skills with an emphasis in analyzing journalism articles. I was hoping this book would help me take my class to the next level. This book is written in a very conversational tone, making it incredibly accessible and relatable to college students. I appreciated the many practical skills presented to become a strong fact-checker, and even videos included to help walk students through some techniques.
The book is not complete though, there are many “place-holder” articles near the end, and there are many grammatical errors. Overall, I think the text can be valuable to teach these tips and tricks of internet fact-checking and that it will be a good resource once completed.