I began today with Group 1. Both groups began by discussing why we were going to verify or refute the information we found on other sources. We then generated keywords. Both groups decided to search for “tree octopus.” Our first hit was the site we had already visited, so we skipped it. The second hit was http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/treeoctopus.asp, which told us that the claim that the tree octopus can live in both land and water is false. We then clicked on the link to a Wikipedia article and discovered that the tree octopus is an internet hoax (we also looked up what hoax means in another search). We also visited http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1352929/Endangered-tree-octopus-proves-students-believe-read-Internet.html and learned that this was from a study done in Connecticut and the researchers found that kids believed it. At this point, group 1 was convinced that it isn’t real, we refuted the original source. They tweeted, “Sometimes the Internet doesn’t tell the truth. Kids shouldn’t believe everything they read on the web.”
Group 2 wasn’t convinced at this point and continued to search for more information. They found the source https://www.buzzle.com/articles/tree-octopus-is-it-real.html which has block quotes from the original website. Not understanding that these were block quotes (even after I explained it), they were convinced that this source verified the original claim. The last source we clicked on was http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/An-Octopus-in-a-Tree-Seems-Real-115497484.html. This source states, “not only did the students believe that the tree octopus was real, they actually refused to believe researchers when they told them the creature was fake.” At this point, my students were discussing big foot, chupacabra, and the Lock Ness Monster and whether or not they believed that these creatures were real. I had to intervene. Ok, let’s go back to the tree octopus. Let’s look at our graphic organizer. We found 5 websites that tell us that the tree octopus is fake and one that claims that it is real. Based on the evidence, are we going to verify or refute the claim? The students began to discuss. They decided that, for the purposes of the assignment, they would tweet that the tree octopus is fake and support it with what they found today. Two of them vowed that they will never stop believing even if there is evidence to refute the claim because there have been sightings of the tree octopus just like big foot and the Lock Ness Monster. Two of them promised to go home and do more research to try and find other sources to verify the claim. They reluctantly tweeted, “The tree octopus is fake because most websites we’ve been on say it’s a myth and some pictures look photoshopped; Wikipedia says it’s a hoax.”
In group 2, I definitely ran over my 30 minutes of guided reading time, but I wasn’t able to get them to a point that seemed finished. I collided with their childish desire to believe and hadn’t anticipated how to recover from this. Should I have continued the lesson next time? Should I have allowed them to try to find more information before we tweeted something that they don’t believe? Can I use their tweet to teach them about validity online?
Another unexpected situation that came up today was inappropriate advertisements that made it past the county firewall. The DailyMail.co.uk site had pictures of blurred nudity that made it through the filter. They told me that when we hit inappropriate content online, we go back and try again.