My grade range/ subject is high school sciences so one website that lots of teachers use is DHMO which talks about the dangers of Dihydrogen monoxide (water) seriously check it out. It’s a great example for why we should always seek further answers and make inferences about why information is being presented. It is super outdated like the octopus one we viewed in class but could be a great resource once its revamped. I know that many teachers use it by just reading the content aloud.

I would want to ensure that my learners are able to be savvy consumers of information, in particular to the area of study I am in. Science lingo can make it easy to believe everything you read or come across online. In the NCTE framework it is specifically brought up how the use of language can be used to persuade, using big scientific words can make a source seem credible. When students are equipped with an understanding of scientific vocabulary they are better able to detect misleading or false information.

In the source Lessons In Critical Thinking they actually discuss the DHMO lesson I was talking about before! The teacher who designed the plan uses it to assess the limitations of students’ abilities to determine what is true and what might not be true. You could easily integrate this into the outcome of naming compounds in science 10, physical science 20 or chemistry 30 or even into the properties of water outcome in chemistry 30.

In The Smell Test there is much discussion about librarians and how they can help students to become digitally literate. One of my co-op teachers is the teacher librarian so I hope to be able to learn a lot from her and integrate it into my science classroom when discussion digital citizenship. Misleading posts on social media, in recent years, has been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccinations, I want to ensure that my students are able to understand how to identify what scientific related news is fake and where reliable information can be found.

Why do people fall for fake news? gives many examples for why people are so easily swayed by fake things on the internet. This includes bias, conformation bias, implicit bias, lower attention spans and its appeal to our emotions. In my classroom it will be discussed why we as a society are growing more and more trusting in social media and less trusting in government media.