Author Archives: mdilwort

Author Archives: mdilwort

Separating fact from non-fact

Separating fact from non-fact

The buzzwords are legion: Fake news, alternative facts, falsehoods. In the last three months, all these terms have been printed in newspapers, flashed on screens and rehashed on television on a nearly daily basis. It’s difficult to discern reliable data from opinion or lies these days. While there is no single sure-fire method for telling fact from non-fact, here are some tools to help you sort through the news today. Know your news First, it would help to know more about different kinds of inauthentic news sources. Fake news: While it’s simple to say that fake news is simply news that isn’t real, the truth is more complicated than that. According to media scientist Melissa Zimdars, fake news falls under … Continued
IU East Math Counts! Tutor Proves Innovation + Teaching = Success

IU East Math Counts! Tutor Proves Innovation + Teaching = Success

Math has always been one of Ashton Fee’s strong suits. When Ann Tobin, Service-Learning Liaison, asked her to tutor for the Math Counts! program over the summer, she was more than enthusiastic to join. Ashton, a sophomore at Indiana University East with a major in Elementary Education and a minor in Early Education, has been a welcome addition to the program ever since. Math Counts!, which has served over 75 students to date, began in February 2016 after a successful summer tutoring program at IU East in 2015. Recognizing that the community need for tutors would remain even after the end of summer, Tobin applied for and received a Chancellor’s Innovation Grant to pay tutors for sharing their math skills … Continued
Credit Where Credit Is Due

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Most assignments that involve research also involve citation. Chances are, you’ve written papers that required a bibliography. This isn’t an empty exercise – this serves a very important purpose. Citation helps place your words and ideas in the continuum of academic thought – by writing, you are joining a conversation with other authors. Citing your sources makes clear who you are responding to. It also helps your own readers follow your train of thought, so they understand where and how you developed your ideas (that’s one reason why interviews or other intangibles are cited in-text but rarely in the reference list – no one who reads your paper would be able to double check something like an interview). And it … Continued
Do you have a story? Oral history interviews are continuing at the IU East Campus Library!

Do you have a story? Oral history interviews are continuing at the IU East Campus Library!

It’s a new semester, a new year, and the library is continuing its mission to collect oral histories from IU East alumni and retired faculty for the IU Bicentennial and IU East archives! We are a few years away from celebrating 200 years of IU history, as well as IU East’s 50th anniversary, but it is never too early to start preserving and collecting all the unique and interesting stories from so many different members of the IU family. IU East has such an interesting beginning, starting off as a couple of rooms at Earlham College before evolving into the ever expanding campus we are today, with our students and faculty coming from all different backgrounds and experiences. We take … Continued
On the Lookout for Fake News

On the Lookout for Fake News

Did you hear that taurine can reverse the effects of tinnitus? Or that a man named Tom Ogle invented a carburetor that runs entirely on fuel vapors? Maybe you did, but hopefully you didn’t believe those stories – because they’re not true. Fake news is legion these days. According to Merrimack College professor Melissa Zimdars, fake news comes in one of four categories: 1 – Completely false news, with no factual basis 2 – News that is misleading or inaccurate 3 – News stories with attention grabbing headlines that may not have anything to do with their article’s content 4 – Satirical sites, whose content is meant to invoke humor And it’s not always easy to tell fake news from … Continued