Information Evaluation: A Practical Handbook

Kernaussagen

• Build a family verification kit before rumours arrive: official sites and numbers you type yourself, a screenshot habit and a shared note of claims already checked.
• Run the ten-minute check in the same order every time: capture, strip to one sentence, trace the original, cross-check two independent sources, then record a verdict.
• For photos and videos, provenance beats pixel-hunting: find the earliest upload and a second angle of the same event before trusting what you see.
• Question every impressive number with four asks: who counted, out of how many, compared with what, and over what period.
• Give children a five-question source sheet for school projects, and teach them to follow an encyclopedia's references back to the original.

In diesem Bit

1. Set up the family verification kit

   A check is quick only when the tools are ready before the rumour arrives, so spend one Sunday half hour building a family verification kit. Start with a trusted-sources list saved on every adult's phone: the school's official portal, the municipal corporation's website and helpline, the railway enquiry service, the electricity board, the gas agency's booking line, and the clinic your family actually uses.

2. The ten-minute claim check, step by step

   When a claim matters, run the same five steps every time so the order becomes automatic. Capture: screenshot it and note who sent it and when.

3. Checking photos and videos on a phone

   Most fakes that reach families are not clever edits but real pictures in the wrong place or year. So the first job is provenance: where and when did this image first appear?

4. Numbers, pamphlets and 'recommended by experts'

   Parents meet impressive numbers constantly: tuition-centre pamphlets, product boxes, school rankings, headlines about children. Four questions take the shine off almost any of them.

5. Teaching the check at home, by age

   Children learn evaluation mostly by watching it, so narrate your own checks aloud: 'this looks exciting, let me see who posted it first. ' Then match the practice to the child.

6. School projects: a source sheet for homework

   School projects are where children first choose sources for themselves, so give them a tool. A source sheet is one page or phone note with five questions for every source.