Sorry for lying. However, this is what I will be talking about in this blog post. News, fake news, how to educate students on getting good information, and how we can put this into our lesson plans in class. I want to begin this blog by saying that I am very new in my journey with understanding digital literacy but I am well aware of the Fake news that travels as I have been a victim of it on multiple occasions, and for that reason, I want to help my students avoid it. 

I am currently minoring in Physics so when thinking about how to help students understand fake news in Physics I thought this might be hard compared to doing a research paper in english. However, after looking at the curriculum of Physics 30 this was one of the outcomes:  PH30-SDS1 Create and carry out a plan to explore one or more topics of personal interest relevant to Physics 30 in depth. What a great way to teach students about Fake News then talk about it with them when they are researching a physics topic of interest to them. And let me tell you there are lots of fake news stories in the world related to science.  

I read an article by NCTE titled Digital-Literacy and Composition and it talked about the integration of digital-literacy into the STEM subject which is often not talked about in regards to digital learning. The article spoke about having students start to create eportfolios to present their learning, research, or understanding. When relating that to Physics 30 I think about how the students are required to research and find their own information on topics and how they would be able to present their information online to then share with their peers what they have learned. I love the idea that this article presents that it is important to invite digital learning into the STEM subjects. Science is often a place where people can use false information, biases, and fake news the most.

When finding resources to go through with my students how in this unit they will be researching a topic we will also discuss how they will find the correct and true information. Beyond ‘fake news’ 10 types of misleading news gives the students a good understanding of all the different types of fake news and helps them understand that it will not always be obvious when the news is fake or biased. This will help teach them that even in science things can be twisted to fit a narrative, thus understanding how to get good information regarding their research project. I also read a paper Bias in the News and there is an amazing TedTalk How to Choose your News that are resources that I will go over with my students before their research of a Physics topic. These resources give lots of information on how to detect fake news and biases however my favourite thing that I learned when researching this topic is that we need to double and triple check EVERYTHING. Now more than ever stories get twisted and when looking for the full truth we need to use multiple sources to find the correct story/information. 

I am hoping that by doing lots of research and fact checking this will also help my students to do the same. 

Have you ever been fooled by fake news?