Model Lesson 3 “Flipped Discussion”

ISTE MODEL LESSON

ready-to-go mini lesson

LESSON 3
“Flipped Discussion” Method

Time: 15 minutes as follows:

• 3-4 minutes demo
• homework: do backlinks investigation
• 11-12 minutes discussion

Materials:

• http://www.genochoice.com/
• computers, one with a projector
• Red Flag Chart (see discussion, below)

Introduction
The site being investigated is Genochoice.com

The Search Method being applied is “finding backlinks” (incoming links to a page from another site).

Demonstrate 3 ways to find backlinks. Explain how backlinks serve as external references for a site and it is important to gather opinions of writers other than the author of the site being investigated. Getting several other opinions is called triangulation. Provide a link to step-by-step instructions for backlink query, e.g., http://newmedz.com/first-aid/linkcheck-1.html

Method 1: link:http://www.genochoice.com (not as powerful as it once was)

Method 2: http://www.genochoice.com -site:www.genochoice.com (finds examples of the hyperlink on sites other than genochoice.com

Method 3: (Deep Web) Ue Google to find link search engines. One of these (free) is opensiteexplorer.org. This returns many more results for an external search of genochoice.com than Methods 1 or 2. However, there is a daily limit to how many links searches you may do for free and you may discover that multiple searches from the school IP address exhaust your free searches quickly.

Home Work
Have each student spend 15 minutes outside of class doing one or more backlink searches. Driving questions are: Why does this site link to genochoice.com? By linking, does this external link support or discredit the information on genochoice.com?

Discussion
When students return, follow up the backlink search activity with a discussion of findings and their implications.

It may be helpful to create a Red Flag Chart with three columns: Accused | Suspicious | Acquited (or similar terms). Place the findings in the appropriate column. Red Flags may travel from one category to another as a result of investigative activity. Furthermore, students may not agree on where to place a Red Flag, which makes for a good discussion starter.

• As a result of backlinks, should the information on genochoice be trusted?
• If you want to probe deeper, ask: Did the external sites get it right? Why would an artist-medical keynote speaker-PhD candidate-webmaster create such a hoax site? Wouldn’t that hurt his reputation?
• Why do you think genochoice.com was created?
• Did any new Red Flags appear?
• Did any Red Flags disappear?

Discussion may lead to a number of interesting hypotheses, which may be further investigated in another session, or assigned.

Genochoice looks less and less like a hoax site the more it is investigated.