health information – Media! Tech! Parenting!

It looks like anti-vax misinformation, promoted over the last several years on social media, is suddenly the focus of the robust challenges that will be needed to help people understand the dangers of going without immunizations.

Screen Shot 2019-03-12 at 4.31.14 PM — Check out the New York Times video below.

The challenges to the scientific information on vaccinations and scientific knowledge offer a real-life learning opportunity, one that parents and educators can use to help young people understand the perils of distorted information, the power of social media to distort facts, and the need for reliable digital sources. The video below, Fool House Rock, is a resource to help people learn about some of the reasons why individuals believe vaccination misinformation on social media. Continue reading “Misinformation Does Not Have to Rule” →

Several weeks ago I wrote Why Wikipedia: The Questions that Parents Keep Asking, published over at the Platform for Good blog. I wrote about the challenges that adults face when children use the giant online encyclopedia, the activities that are occurring to make Wikipedia better, and the concerns that adults have with sourcing. Now I share a situation that illustrates Wikipedia at its best — an example that the parents of digital kids may want to point out to their children.

The New York Time recently published Wikipedia Emerges as Trusted Internet Source for Ebola Information, an October 26, 2014 article which describes the steps that medical professional are taking to edit and vet Ebola information on Wikipedia. Written by Noam Cohen, the Times’s piece says that Wikipedia’s Ebola article had more than 17 millions views last month and profiles some of the medical professionals who are writing and editing the information about this terrible epidemic.