No Time for News: Evaluating Information on Smartphones
Information is Changing
The way we consume information is an interesting topic to me. In looking to the future, I see that smartphone screens are becoming the main way many people interact with the rest of the world. It's a powerful computer. For most of us, the smartphone is the most valuable thing on our person. Students are coming to us with their phones to ask us about articles or books. Often they find things on their smartphone that are designed for mobile users. Savvy publications are designing their content to be more mobile friendly and it is changing our information landscape.
No Time for News
I wrote a piece for the Summer 2017 issue of Alki about the changing landscape of mobile devices and how we access information through them. It has a link to the online learning guide for Shoreline Community College on newspapers and discusses some solutions for student assessment of online sources of information.
As a concerned third party with nothing to gain, librarians are ideal ambassadors for news literacy. Te public has become more aware that all news is not equal. Te increasing awareness of fake news makes it easier to broach the topic of news literacy at the reference desk. In addition, online learning guides can illustrate the nuts and bolts of news literacy and evaluation. By providing something users can reference outside of our conversation, the tools are in their hands to make informed decisions about the news they consume.