Be Careful What You Believe

I remember being a kid and actually sitting at the table reading the newspaper with my papa. I would look at the comics (does anyone else remember Archie?) while he would read the actual news. Every single night my family would turn the TV to watch the news at 6pm and for one hour we would catch up on the current events. The first time I made it into my local newspaper I was on cloud 9 ☁️ I felt like a celebrity because my skating picture made the paper.

My oh my how times have changed. I don’t remember the last time I’ve read a physical newspaper. When Covid first happened in 2020 and I wanted to watch the reopening plan I had no idea how to find my news channel on my TV ?‍♀️. Being in the newspaper is no big deal anymore because most people have a social media presence before that are even born #birthannounchments .

With the change in how news is distributed it is even more important to know how to spot fake news. Verifying everything you read on the internet is a skill all students should have to learn at some point in there life. I remember always being told not to use Wikipedia in high school, but until a teacher actually showed me how easy it was to alter the information I didn’t know why Wikipedia was forbidden. I truly began to understand that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet when the pandemic hit. There were so many controversial articles and every single one was claiming something different. I would read two articles back to back on Facebook claiming completely opposite things. If I, at 23 years old, was just being made aware of the fake news debacle then what is happening to the students in our schools. Obviously curriculum hasn’t changed to include digital literacy and fake news education, but I think it’s still something that teachers need to somehow implement into the classroom. Using the video about spotting fake headlines as a brain break activity could be a way to educate your students about fake headlines. The article 5 Ways Teachers Are Fighting Fake News shares how students would write fake articles on a topic and have students over Skype try to distinguish between what is true and what is fake. It was a writing activity which can be included in the English curriculum  but it still gave educators to teach about recognizing fake news.

Like so many other things, fake news and digital literacy aren’t in the curriculum, but educators need to be creative in teaching students life skills beyond the curriculum.