The first thing I checked into was Helping Students Identify Fake News. John Spencer shares how we have so many digital tools and are more able than ever to create and publish our work but that it also leaves that door open to access of fake new and things that aren’t true being published also. Stanford University did a study that was kind of disturbing because 25% of high school students used in the study, could not identify real stories/fake news, real/fake photographs or authentic/staged video content. He goes on to say how this is a real problem and it’s not going away any time soon.

The Five C’s of Critical Consuming is the system he likes to use with his students in being discerning when it comes to digital literacy. Its a five step process of context, credibility, construction, corroboration and comparing.  Giving students many questions to ask themselves like when articles were written, how credible is the source, is it speculation? Fact or opinion? Suggests comparing with other sources for nuance and what is actually going on.  These suggestions are going to be key for my classroom discussions around digital literacy. Even with younger grades these discussion are important.  Although they won’t be reading articles, depending what age they are of course, the majority of kids in younger grades are already spending a lot of time on line.  The discussion could even be around pictures, videos specifically as that is also a big problem area already.  I am in the middle years program presently but hope to switch to the K-5.  The lessons are relevant even at Kindergarten considering the freedom a lot of kids seem to have online. A Stanford study was done to assess where a chosen group of kids were at, when it came to discerning fact from fiction.  The word they use for the outcome is bleak. There were surprising things discovered after they became aware of the extent of the problem, they just assumed because young people are fluent in social media, they are equally savvy about what they find there.  This is not the case.   Going forward in our classrooms it’s going to be more important than ever to incorporate different lessons when it comes to digital literacy.  The National Council of Teachers for English shares many ways to our students thinking about what they are reading or watching. In the article’s section on Consume, Curate and Create, some of the suggested questions will get students thinking deeper as well as ourselves and the impact we are also making.

• Do learners review a variety of sources to evaluate information as they consider bias and perspective in sources?
• Do learners evaluate content they find online before sharing with others?
• Do learners evaluate multimedia sources for the effects of visuals, sounds, hyperlinks, and other features on the text’s meaning or emotional impact?

As we all discover how this new way of doing things is changing and affecting our youth, there are new ways we have to learn to teach and meet them where they are at.