Not necessarily.
And that’s the lesson that Stephanie Rosalia was teaching her students at P.S. 225 in Brooklyn. The website they were looking at, All About Explorers, is intentionally peppered with false facts.
Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned. Story from the NYTimes.
No such thing as “false facts”
This one is really starting to bug me. (Not just here–lots of places.)
The site may have “false information” or “false text” or “false assertions” or “lies stated as facts”–but it can’t have false facts.
trust and verify
“Story fromm the NYTimes”
I hope she told them not to trust the NYT whether in paper or digitized.
Facts
Under the fourth definition of facts you could have false facts.
See:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fact
Maybe, but
That’s a fine case of dictionary as record of what’s happened. Once you use that definition, “fact” becomes as meaningless as “information”–just another synonym for “stuff.” (There are days when I feel as though every noun in the English language is, in effect, just another synonym for Stuff.)
Children Internet
How wonderful to have a discussion about what constitutes a fact whether on the Internet or in other print or non-print medium. So many young people and adults accept the validity of information without questioning.
Ellen D. Rappaport
If it is in Print or on the INternet It must be true
This concept is one we have been trying to get thru to students and faculty under our Information Literacy initiatives. But so many are in such a hurru they will just grab anything instead of trying to verify their information