As the picture of the tabloids demonstrates, fake news has been around for a long time and it is still with us at the checkout line at the grocery store! But it is more invasive with the Internet.
We might be getting sick of the words “fake news” right now due to their overuse and misuse these days. But it is refreshing to know that good information is out there to help people who choose to take it in to help sort out what is real and fake.
When I was in Bangkok teaching a class for the USAID in January, I enjoyed reading the English version of the local papers. I found an article about how to spot fake news and to think before sharing (novel approach)!
Then when I got back, our local paper the Columbus Dispatch had a wonderful article about how students are being taught to THINK about what they are reading and how to come up with what is accurate. Following that, ASCD published an article from the Seattle Times which released a worksheet to help students lessons on news judgment.
I am sharing the Columbus Dispatch article first. The next two blogs will be the one from Bangkok and from ASCD (a global community dedicated to excellence in learning, teaching, and leading). The Dispatch article shows how various area schools are incorporating reading and discussing news articles into social studies, government classes, and writing courses. I’d love to see a follow-up study to see what kind of conversations might have occurred in the homes where the older generation uses its comfortable sources and the younger one has learned to delve deeper.
Teacher Amanda Suttle’s students know to take with a grain of salt an online article positing that millennials are bad with money and need financial-planning help. It was written by a bank executive. And they get that a photo of mutated daisies, posted online with the claim that they sprouted near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, could be total bunk. These were examples that she floated this week for her 12-student media-literacy class at Licking Valley High School, just east of Newark, and she’s glad to see their healthy skepticism.
“I often ask them questions that I don’t have the answers to because I want them to think for themselves and not just tell me what they think I want to hear or what they think the ‘right’ answer is,” Suttle said in an email. “I consider it vital that they learn how to question everything, to resist the urge to believe the single story, the stereotype or the first thing they hear. In essence, I want them to read more and not be easily duped.