Background Information

Chapter 5: RIP®~ing Beyond Science with Slippers and M&M’s (Critical Thinking in Social Studies and Mathematics)

by Maki Fullerton 

Validity, reliability, and credibility are extremely important characteristics of digital information sources and the content they contain. In this episode, teacher Maki Fullerton’s students learn how the Internet can be a valuable source of information and tool for communication. However, as they conducted their research investigations stemming from their observations about a cultural artifact and application of mathematical concepts to the packaging of candies, they soon learned that being a critical consumer of information is as important as the information itself.  To achieve the More Emphasis condition of Assessing to learn what students do understand, Ms. Fullerton showed her “students the web page of M&M’s colors to assess if they could link the information to our previous lesson on probability.”