The Pacific Northwest tree octopus is an Internet hoax created in 1998 by a humor writer under the pseudonym Lyle Zapato. [1] [2] Since its creation, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus website has been commonly referenced in Internet literacy classes in schools and has been used in multiple studies demonstrating children's gullibility regarding online sources of information.
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This fictitious endangered species of cephalopod was given the Latin name Octopus paxarbolis (the species name being coined from Latin pax, the root of Pacific, and Spanish arbol meaning "tree"). It was purportedly able to live both on land and in water, and was said to live in the Olympic National Forest and nearby rivers, spawning in water where its eggs are laid. Its major predator was said to be the Sasquatch, a mythical creature said to inhabit the same region.
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In 2018, the website was selected as one of 30 websites to form the initial collection of the Library of Congress's Web Culture's Web Archive. [3]
Leu et al. (2007) conducted an empirical study on 13-year old US school children's ability to critically evaluate online information for reliability. [4] The sample included the top quartile of school children (n=53) in samples from the states of Connecticut and South Carolina. Each school child was exposed to the spoof site Save The Northwest Pacific Tree Octopus, devoted to this rare species of octopus, complete with pictures of the animal itself and its environment. The school children then received a short, fictitious, message from another class, asking them to locate and evaluate the reliability of the website. They were to provide three reasons for their answer, and summarize the most important information from that website in one or two sentences. Then they were asked to send their information via instant messaging, email, or to post this on a blog site. Following the activity, school children were interviewed to ensure that they were familiar with the term "reliable", an important concept in the task. When asked what this term meant, all responded with answers indicating that they understood the term (e.g., "It means that you can trust it"; "It means it will always be there for you"; or "It's like a friend that you can trust"). [5] [6]
In the spring of 2017, Loos, Ivan & Leu (2018) [7] replicated the study in a Dutch school class of 27 children (13 girls and 14 boys, 11/12 years old) in the following way: The teacher and the school children were told by the first author of the study that the lesson that would follow would be an online reading comprehension exercise; the real purpose of the lesson was not revealed in advance. The children were asked by the scholar to visit the abovementioned website. They were given the following instructions: "Have a look at this website. Look at the pictures, click on the links if you wish. Do not hurry, you have time enough. And this is not a test. It will not be graded." The website was automatically translated to Dutch, a facility offered by the Chromebook they all used. Then, they were asked to answer the following questions:
Hence, these school children thought the text was about their willingness to undertake action for an endangered animal.
The pupils who answered 'YES' to question (3) were judged as perceiving the site as a reliable one. In this way, it was not necessary to explicitly ask about the reliability of the site, which would have risked priming them. The school children were debriefed after the session and they received a new media literacy training.
The 2007 US study found that slightly more than half (27) of the 53 school children taking part in the study reported the website as being very reliable. Only 6 out of the 53 school children (11%) viewed the website as unreliable. [7] Each of these 6 school children had just participated in a lesson that used this website to teach them to be suspicious of information online.
In the 2017 Dutch study only 2 out of the total 27 school children (7%) recognized that the website was a hoax. [7] The setting of the task (school environment), the trust in their teacher and the scholar, and the emotional involvement (the topic was an animal in danger) might have made it more difficult for them to perceive the information on the website as fake. Several told the scholar they were shocked that they had considered the digital information on the website to be reliable, as they had received several lessons in new literacy training at school over the past year.
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic, such as that of English, Russian, and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching Chinese people to read and write Chinese characters, which are not alphabetic, using pinyin, which is alphabetic.
Internet research is the practice of using Internet information, especially free information on the World Wide Web, or Internet-based resources in research.
The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme Panorama, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a "spaghetti tree". At the time of the report's broadcast, spaghetti was relatively unknown in the United Kingdom, and a number of viewers contacted the BBC afterwards for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled".
A KWL table, or KWL chart, is a graphical organizer designed to help in learning. The letters KWL are an acronym, for what students, in the course of a lesson, already know, want to know, and ultimately learn. It is a part of the constructivist teaching method where students move away from what are considered traditional methods of teaching and learning. In this particular methodology the students are given the space to learn by constructing their own learning pace and their own style of understanding a given topic or idea. The KWL chart or table was developed within this methodology and is a form of instructional reading strategy that is used to guide students taking them through the idea and the text. A KWL table is typically divided into three columns titled Know, Want and Learned. The table comes in various forms as some have modified it to include or exclude information.
Reading comprehension is the ability to process written text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Reading comprehension relies on two abilities that are connected to each other: word reading and language comprehension. Comprehension specifically is a "creative, multifaceted process" that is dependent upon four language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Reading comprehension is a part of literacy.
DIBELS is a series of short tests designed to evaluate key literacy skills among students in kindergarten through 8th grade, such as phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The theory behind DIBELS is that giving students a number of quick tests, will allow educators to identify students who need additional assistance and later monitor the effectiveness of intervention strategies.
Gorst is a census-designated place (CDP) at the head of Sinclair Inlet in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. The population was 605 at the 2020 census. Gorst, located on the shores of Puget Sound, is primarily a town consisting of stores, auto dealerships and espresso stands. A residential area, located west of the water along State Route 3, also exists.
The IEA's Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international study of reading (comprehension) achievement in 9-10 year olds. It has been conducted every five years since 2001 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). It is designed to measure children's reading literacy achievement, to provide a baseline for future studies of trends in achievement, and to gather information about children's home and school experiences in learning to read.
Accelerated Reader (AR) is an educational program created by Renaissance Learning. It is designed to monitor and manage students' independent reading practice and comprehension in both English and Spanish. The program assesses students' performance through quizzes and tests based on the books they have read. As the students read and take quizzes, they are awarded points. AR monitors students' progress and establishes personalised reading goals according to their reading levels.
Catherine Elizabeth Snow is an educational psychologist and applied linguist. In 2009 Snow was appointed to the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professorship in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, having previously held the Henry Lee Shattuck Professorship also in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Snow is past president of the American Educational Research Association (2000–2001). She chaired the RAND Corporation 'reading study group' from 1999.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors, who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; its English-language edition has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Information and media literacy (IML) enables people to show and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages. IML is a combination of information literacy and media literacy. The transformative nature of IML includes creative works and creating new knowledge; to publish and collaborate responsibly requires ethical, cultural and social understanding.
The most recent comprehensive data on adult literacy in the United States come from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) study conducted in stages from 2012 to 2017 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). English literacy test results from 2014 suggest that 21% of U.S. adults ages 16 to 65 score at or below PIAAC literacy level 1, meaning they have difficulty "[completing] tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences." Included in that 21% is the 4.2% of respondents who were unable to be assessed due to language barriers, cognitive disability, or physical disability. A 2020 study by the Gallup analysis company funded by the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy estimated that getting all U.S. adults to at least PIAAC literacy level 3 proficiency would raise American's incomes by $2.2 trillion.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of sight or touch.
Self-report sexual risk behaviors are a cornerstone of reproductive health–related research, particularly when related to assessing risk-related outcomes such as pregnancy or acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as HIV. Despite their frequency of use, the utility of self-report measures to provide an accurate account of actual behavior are questioned, and methods of enhancing their accuracy should be a critical focus when administering such measures. Self-reported assessments of sexual behavior are prone to a number of measurement concerns which may affect the reliability and validity of a measure, ranging from a participant's literacy level and comprehension of behavioral terminology to recall biases and self-presentation.
A sighted child who is reading at a basic level should be able to understand common words and answer simple questions about the information presented. They should also have enough fluency to get through the material in a timely manner. Over the course of a child's education, these foundations are built on to teach higher levels of math, science, and comprehension skills. Children who are blind not only have the education disadvantage of not being able to see: they also miss out on the very fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools.
Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child's knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn how to read and write words. It signals a belief that, in literate society, young children—even one- and two-year-olds—are in the process of becoming literate. Through the support of parents, caregivers, and educators, a child can successfully progress from emergent to conventional reading.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
The S.U.R.E. Campaign is an information literacy awareness campaign initiated by the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore. In Singapore, the NLB drives the information literacy awareness for the nation.
Wikipedia's volunteer editor community has the responsibility of fact-checking Wikipedia's content. Their aim is to curb the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation by the website.
Don Leu, Chair in Literacy and Technology at UConn, 'All 25 students fell for the Internet hoax....anyone can publish anything on the Internet, and today's students are not prepared to critically evaluate the information they find there.'
Of the 25 seventh-graders identified as their schools' best online readers, 24 recommended this bogus website to another class that Leu had told them was also researching endangered species.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) (178 KiB) Professor Leu's teaching tool.