Now, lets move on to the fact that there are some people that legitimately believe this to be true. Not the Abraham Lincoln part (or maybe...I don't know) but the part about whatever is posted on the internet being true. It's like saying that everything on TV is true or said on the radio is true. It's not.
Perhaps when these medias first came out and they were revolutionary and unknown and it was FANTASTICAL! (yup...I said it) At that point in time, I suppose it was acceptable to believe that everything that was put out to the world could be believed as true. We didn't know...but now, we do.
So we can no longer claim ignorance. And it's so important that we teach our children/students that everything is not true and how to differentiate between fact and not-so-obvious fiction.
I recently began working with my middle school students about evaluating the websites they gather their facts from in order to ensure their validity.
Side note: When I said that to them...they looked at me and I was informed that they didn't know what I was saying. I told them we needed to look at websites and see if the information was accurate and legit. They understood that.
Anyway...it was kind of a fun series of lessons. I didn't tell the kids we were working on website validity. I told them we were working on researching some kind of social justice/current event/make the world a better place website. Of course, I have to model what I expect. So we visited http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/.
It started with choosing a cause that you have a passion for and ensuring that you are properly educated before you start spreading any message. So I told them that this particular cause was very near and dear to my heart but I wanted them to be fully educated. Of course many of them were confused having never heard of a tree octopus. It was SO fun to be completely flabbergasted at the fact that they had never heard of this animal!!
Since they didn't know anything about the Tree Octopus, we started researching some basic questions. Ex. Where do they live? What do they eat? How do they breath? Why are they endangered? I encouraged them to explore the website and also other websites (not provided by me).Some classes explored outside the website others stayed solely on the page I gave them. The ones that started exploring began questioning whether or not these animals were real sooner. However, they came to me with "They aren't real because I've never heard of them." or "They can't be real because I've never seen one." To which many other students jumped on board to exclaim that just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist...i.e. atoms and molecules. And the fact that they are only 10/11/12/13 means that they haven't explored the whole world or seen all there is to see.
It was an exciting discussion from a teacher perspective.
As time went on it was very clear that the class was divided as to whether these animals were real or not. So we finally sat down one day and had a discussion. No laptops, no computers, no devices. I very seriously wanted to know what they thought since this was such a hot topic of debate in my classes. Regardless of what they thought, I needed a solid defense...an explanation of why they felt the way they did.
In the end, I told them that the whole website was fake. The students that believed it to be fake felt validated. The students that believed it to be real were frustrated, amazed, and some even thought it was hilarious. BUT, I got my point across. Just because it's on the internet, does not mean it is real.
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