The topic of digital literacy and determining whether or not something is fake news got me thinking back to my internship. I interned in a grade 4 classroom. During my time at the school, I planned a cross-curricular research project that connected English language arts and science. I think that it is easy to make a curricular connection between these subjects and digital literacy as science is a very inquiry based subject and ELA develops students’ abilities to conduct research, comprehend what they have read, and distinguish fact from fiction. As part of this project students were required to use one printed and one online resource. We had a discussion about the importance of using multiple resources to conduct research to ensure that you are getting the whole truth. It helps us to decipher if the information found in a resource is factual or if it someone’s personal opinions or guesses. I found it interesting to watch a TEDEd video by Damon Brown because the tips that they discuss connected to some of the concepts that I was teaching in the research project so well. In the video they talk about using multiple sources so that you know what information is true to the story and what was added based on opinion or for effect. However, there are two things that I did not get into with my students that was discussed in the video and would be great for them to learn. One, was learning to recognize language that suggests someone is sharing their opinion, or is unsure of the truth. Two, was something that was also mentioned in class as we continue our ongoing conversation about digital literacy. We need to look into the author and sources because this helps you to decide if the information has been corrupted in anyway. The video specifically mentions being wary of anonymous sources which struck me because I have never thought twice about it. I didn’t think much of it because if I was in the position to provide information in a news article, I think that I would choose to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.
To help my students understand the way in which information can be adapted to suit the needs or beliefs of the author I would like to utilize a Bias in the Media worksheet that will help students not only learn about the different types of bias in the media but also how to recognize it which can be the tricky part. You can take fake news and bias quizzes online, but sometimes the media that it provides you with is so obvious that a baby could solve it. I like that this worksheet provides them with more realistic examples. The evaluation sheet encourages them to find their own resources to look into and provide evidence as to how the article is being bias. This will set them up with skills that will help them to make these determinations outside of the classrooms setting. I also like the idea of using a worksheet to help learn digital literacy skills because of some information that stuck out to me in an article by Stanford History Education Group. They note that there is evidence that you can build digital literacy and evaluation skills offline. I really liked reading this because I think that it is wise for a person that is online to already have built up some digital literacy skills because it is much harder, and is sometimes too late, to learn them once you are already online.
I find the topic of deciding whether or not something is fake news more relevant after the Covid-19 pandemic. I always understood that there was fake information out there and that a large portion of the internet is opinion based, but it never hit me quite as hard as it did during the pandemic. My family took the pandemic incredibly serious in the early stages when there was so much uncertainty because I have a congenital heart defect and mom was undergoing some tests which turned out to be nothing (thank goodness). Sidenote: this is not to say that we did not take the later stages of the pandemic seriously, but as more and more research came out we felt comfortable not doing things like washing our groceries before they came into the house. While my family was doing everything that we could to protect ourselves and later did our best to follow every government established rule, one of my friends was denying that there was any reason to be cautious. This was often a topic of debate between us. We always decided to agree to disagree because there was no way for us to disprove what the other believed when the internet was filled with information from both sides of the discussion. Although, after reading a comic by The Oatmeal I believe that even if all of the news and media out there supported only one side it still would not be possible to change the mind of the other person. The comic talks about core beliefs and explains that they are difficult to change even when information proving the opposite to be true arises. Typically, I would suggest that core beliefs develop from events in childhood and parental opinion meaning that you are raised to believe in those things. Although, with the understanding that neither us nor our parents had lived through a pandemic like this one I believe that the core beliefs surrounding this specific situation developed quite rapidly. I bring this up because I learned a lot about the internet, its reliability, and fake news from this experience. However, I have hope that the next generations won’t have to have a similar experience to learn these same concepts. I think that this makes it my responsibility to teach students about recognizing our beliefs and how that shapes what we see online and how we decide if something is true.