Knowledge
How teachers can educate students to spot fake news and not get fooled
As more students get their information and resources online, it is increasingly vital that they know how to verify sources and spot fake news or images, which often appear indistinguishable from a reliable source.
With the rapid advent of mobile devices and booming use of social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp, fake news is rapidly becoming the power which shapes public opinion and even sways elections. As more students get their information and resources online, it is increasingly vital that they know how to verify sources and spot fake news or images, which often appear indistinguishable from a reliable source. Stanford researchers have found that students have trouble judging the credibility of information online. This article attempts to help teachers with tools and tips to make students analyze the consequences of fake news and build the skills needed to question and verify what they view online.
Fake News Lesson Plan
A lesson plan that helps students understand what fake news is, to engage in source credibility testing, and guides a discussion that helps students understand what they ought to pay attention to when evaluating sources.
Another Fake News Lesson Plan with Activity Cards
This lesson has been produced to provide students with the necessary skills to navigate the potential hazards of “fake news” and media manipulation.
Hoax or No Hoax? Strategies for Online Comprehension and Evaluation
The resources helps students and teachers use research-based comprehension strategies to read and evaluate websites. It also helps in practicing analysis by comparing hoax and real websites and identifying false or misleading information and applying what they have learned about hoaxes by creating an outline of their own hoax website and evaluating the outlines of their peers.
How to teach your students about fake news?
This lesson gives students media literacy skills they need to navigate the media, including how to spot fake news.
Spot the Fake: Teaching Students to be News Detectives
This blog post from the Concordia University – Portland helps in imparting to students some of the real-world knowledge and skills they will need to recognize certain characteristics of fake news.
News Literacy in a Digital Age
This resource helps you enhance your students' critical thinking and literacy skills. Using a Ferguson (Missouri) incident as a case study, students and teachers will explore the media coverage and the protests that followed— driven to a large degree by social media—and learn to become informed and effective civic participants in today’s digital landscape.
10 Questions for Fake News Detection
Teachers can share this questionnaire with students to assess the likelihood that a piece of information is fake news. The more red flags that the students circle, the more skeptical they should be of the news in question!
While getting students ready for the world outside and helping them identify fact from fiction could be a daunting task at first, it is a vital responsibility of teachers to ensure that they educate young people to be responsible and informed citizens.
Do you already help your students sharpen their media literacy skills? Please share your experiences and ideas with us.