Comments on The Killer Attitude: Source criticism criticism

@DoktorSpinn - thanks for the comment. I have look...

2010-03-05T15:52:45.404+01:00

@DoktorSpinn - thanks for the comment. I have looked at the page at internetkunskap.se, put I still don't see any update in the text.

And I still suggest a remake of this video. When I met @Annika last Friday we chatted briefly on the topic.

I understand that the intention isn't to provide an academic/scientific view of "källkritik", but I do believe that the topic merits some more practical common sense reasoning.

(And for some reason this post doesn't show up as a trackback in the comments section on internetkunskap.se)

Thanks for pointing the "Brasilia flaw" ...

2010-03-01T01:32:04.045+01:00

Thanks for pointing the "Brasilia flaw" out - you are right of course! I honestly don't mean that it is enough to just click in on the Wikipedia article!

I will make sure to add this point to the text on Internetkusnkap.se. As a production, it is all done in one take, and I guess that's the main problem here.

I also agree that we should have done this clip longer and with more depth, since it is such an important subject.

Ha ha! I just watched the film and it’s really ama...

2010-02-26T15:04:24.354+01:00

Ha ha! I just watched the film and it’s really amateurish. And the problem you mention at about three minutes into the film (verifying that Brasilia is the capital) is just hilarious! Is he aware of what he’s saying? Did they watch it afterwards before deciding to include that part in the film? It looks as if he actually claims that we should be concerned about the accuracy of something we read in the very first lines of a Wikipedia article (so that we can see it already in the Google search window), but if we read the actual article and in particular if we look in the right-hand-side table, then we can trust the information without any problem. I can’t imagine that he actually means that, but he said it and that’s what they put in the film. Clowns!

Apart from that the film is quite vague on what they recommend the pupils to do. At 4.20 they suggest that one can check other sources and compare and at 6.30 they say one should go to the original source, but in neither case it’s not really explained how a pupil could do that. In the very end at 8.30 they summarize their points and this is the only good part of the film. But why didn’t they use the ten minutes of the film to show concrete examples of how to do these things? The only example shown is, if I’m not mistaken, the Brasilia example we are discussing – and there they screw it up completely! The failure to show and explain the main points using concrete examples is, in my opinion, the main weakness with the film, apart from the Brasilia flaw.

On a serious note: I wouldn’t show this film to the kids. The flaw you identified might make them start to reason in the way that the presenter in the film does (if the kids pay attention to what he says). And the other parts of the film are not really useful. The teacher should be able to explain these things him-/herself, and that sounds like a better option to me.