Sometimes the news is labeled as “fake” because the reader dislikes it or it contradicts their beliefs. However, fake news is when the news information, as well as the news organization itself, may intentionally be completely fabricated. Educators and media literacy advocates are working in the classroom to help students discern fact from fiction in news sources. This video can be played during a lesson on assessing the validity and identifying the purpose of digital content.
How do you know if an online image is real or not? This video from Common Sense Education provides a handout on useful guidance on using a reverse image search on Google. This resource is part of the News and Media Literacy Collection. This video can be played during a lesson on assessing the validity and identifying the purpose of digital content.
This story is an installment of PBS NewsHour’s four-part series on “Junk News,” and explores who is behind creating inflammatory news sites, and why. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien profiles a leading purveyor of junk news, Cyrus Massoumi, who has hit the jackpot exploiting the trend toward hyperpartisan news. Why does Massoumi do it? He makes a lot of money and it’s easy.
After watching this video, classrooms may engage in a discussion about who has the responsibility to address the dangers of junk news. Is it the people who make the news, or the people who consume it? See support materials below for guiding questions and additional information about media literacy. This video can be played during a lesson on assessing the validity and identifying the purpose of digital content.
With mobile phone alerts, social media updates, and 24/7 news cycles, it's hard to escape the daily flood of breaking news. But do kids really understand what they're seeing when stories first break? Help students analyze breaking news with a critical eye for false or incomplete information, and discuss the downsides of our "always-on" news media culture.
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In this lesson plan from Newseum, students use a video and graphics to help tune up their “fairness meters” to detect three key factors that can determine how objective or biased a news story is; then they analyze real-life examples.
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Students will define confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and examine accuracy, perspective, credibility, and relevance in sources. Through articles and an opportunity to research one side of a debate, students will consider how confirmation bias and motivated reasoning shape the way we respond to evidence presented in news and opinion pieces.
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Start a conversation about fake news and media literacy with this collection of links to fake, real (but surprising or hard to believe), and problematic (where truth and error or spin combine) news stories. Since bogus stories often disappear from the internet (and sometimes real stories, too), you’ll also find an archived link for each story that will remain usable even if the original link breaks.
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Digital literacy is about finding, evaluating, using, and creating digital content in meaningful and responsible ways. It requires thinking skills and technical abilities. You can use a range of strategies to develop digital literacy in your school.
This site has great resources for how to find digital content, how to evaluate digital content, using digital content in meaningful ways, creating digital content, and responsible use - copyright and attribution. The resources can be selected from the site by teachers and shared with students or students can be directed to this site.
After first completing a web search scavenger hunt, the class learns about the inner workings of search engines and has an opportunity to flex their analytical skills in a search for strange and unlikely animals.
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This lesson covers the purposes that a website might serve, both for the users and the creators. The class explores a handful of the most-used websites in the United States and discusses how each of those sites is useful for users and how it might also serve its creators.
