{"id":2649,"date":"2019-05-21T10:51:15","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T14:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachersfirst.com\/blog\/?p=2649"},"modified":"2019-05-30T17:38:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T21:38:37","slug":"fake-news-what-can-we-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/2019\/05\/fake-news-what-can-we-do-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake News – What can we do about it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

80%<\/strong> of middle schoolers mistake sponsored content for real news<\/p>\n

3 in 4<\/strong> students can\u2019t distinguish between real and fake news on Facebook<\/p>\n

Fewer than 1 in 3<\/strong> students are skeptical of biased news sources<\/p>\n

(ISTE Fake News Infographic 2017<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>As educators, what can we do to make sure our students are not counted as one of the statistics surrounding fake news? From<\/span> librarians<\/span><\/a> to<\/span> news organizations<\/span><\/a> to<\/span> educational associations<\/span><\/a>, help for educators to combat fake news in their classrooms is at an all-time high. There are many strategies to choose from.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best strategy is teaching students the skills they need to<\/span> be their own fact checkers<\/span><\/a>. There are a variety of<\/span> lessons plans<\/span><\/a> available for all types of classrooms. Students in<\/span> elementary school<\/span><\/a> need to be able to start<\/span> distinguishing fact from opinion<\/span><\/a>. In middle school, students can begin to learn<\/span> what is considered news<\/span><\/a> and<\/span> how media affects<\/span><\/a> so many aspects of our lives. There are many lessons available for grades 3-8 on<\/span> CommonSense Media<\/span><\/a> through their digital citizenship curriculum. Once they are in high school, students need to be able to start<\/span> identifying fake news<\/span><\/a> and<\/span> critically analyzing media<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many online games and activities available for classroom use. The New York Times offers a variety of classroom-ready activities like<\/span> distinguishing between fact and opinion<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> what’s going on in this picture<\/span><\/a>, and the<\/span> weekly news quiz<\/span><\/a>. Games like<\/span> Factitious<\/span><\/a> and<\/span> Fake it to Make It<\/span><\/a> are all about recognizing fake news. Assess students’ skills in recognizing fake news by trying out a quiz by<\/span> Penguin Books<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> Channel One News<\/span><\/a> (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), the<\/span> BBC<\/span><\/a>, or<\/span> Politifact<\/span><\/a>. Find a mix of online activities at<\/span> Flackcheck.org<\/span><\/a> from Annenberg Public Policy Center.<\/span><\/p>\n

We should also strive to make sure that students have resources that they need readily available to them to help them evaluate various types of media. For younger students,<\/span> Kathy Schrock’s 5Ws<\/span><\/a> of website evaluation is in plain language and easily understandable. For older students, the<\/span> CRAAP test<\/span><\/a> and<\/span> RADAR<\/span><\/a> are more appropriate. Students should also have access to fact-checking sites like<\/span> Factcheck.org<\/span><\/a>, the<\/span> Washington Post Fact Checker<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> Snopes<\/span><\/a>, and<\/span> Politifact<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Teachers need resources too! For teacher use, check out<\/span> Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers …and other people who care about facts<\/span><\/a> and \u00a0<\/span>PACE University’s Real vs. Fake News libguide<\/span><\/a>. Be on the lookout for the upcoming digital literacy project<\/span> MediaWise<\/span><\/a> for teens. \u00a0As always, TeachersFirst also has resources for you. Check out our<\/span> media literacy page<\/span><\/a> and our<\/span> related blog posts<\/span><\/a>. Let’s make sure to work together to make our students accomplished fact checkers!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

80% of middle schoolers mistake sponsored content for real news 3 in 4 students can\u2019t distinguish between real and fake news on Facebook Fewer than 1 in 3 students are skeptical of biased news sources (ISTE Fake News Infographic 2017) As educators, what can we do to make sure our students are not counted as … read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[173,53,63,28],"class_list":["post-2649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-literacy","tag-classroom","tag-media-literacy","tag-research","tag-strategies"],"modified_by":"Karen Streeter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2649"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2687,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649\/revisions\/2687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}