Fake “News” in a “Post-truth” World | Building a Culture of Collaboration® In the wake of a contentious U.S. presidential election cycle, researchers and educators are shining a spotlight on critical “information literacy” skills. Determining authority, accuracy, and bias have long been essential aspects of analyzing content and sources of information. Today, this is no easy task for students (and adults as well) when authors of “information” do their best to deceive readers or hide their identity behind domains, such as .org, factual-seeming but phony statistical data, and authoritative-sounding language based on “pants of fire” lies. In her 2014 book, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, researcher danah boyd wrote, “becoming literate in a networked age requires hard work, regardless of age” (177). How long have school librarians been challenging students to determine the bias in Stormfront’s Martin Luther King Jr. Last week on LM_NET, school librarian Andrew van Zyl of St. • Consider the source. Works Cited boyd, dana. Valenza, Joyce.
10 Twitter how-tos for Twitter’s 10th birthday – Poynter In honor of 10 years of journalists tweeting (and getting into Twitter fights, tweetstorming and tweeting hot takes), here are 10 guides to using the social network from our archives. These include advice from people such as Craig Silverman, now editor at BuzzFeed Canada, on posting Twitter corrections, Nisha Chittal, manager of social media at MSNBC, on figuring out what's public and private on Twitter, and David Beard, executive editor at PRI, who suggested eight ways to attract followers. 10 ways journalists can use Twitter before, during and after reporting a story By Mallary Jean Tenore, 2011 One way Tenore suggests using Twitter is to curate reactions to the news. The tweets prompted me to write about the style change and capture people’s reactions in my lead: “When the AP Stylebook announced via Twitter that it was changing the style for ‘Web site’ to ‘website,’ some users let out shouts of praise: “Finally!” I find it essential to have coworkers who can be my reality check.
Web Evaluation: Does This Website Smell Funny to You? One of my friends spent this past weekend working with her 2nd grade daughter on a research project. While her daughter flew through the arts and crafts portion and was able to handwrite the “sloppy copy” of her presentation, she struggled when it came to typing the final draft. She didn’t know where the period was. This reminded me how easy it is to overestimate our students’ abilities when it comes to technology. One of my favorite things to work on with students in this area is website evaluation. When working with older students (8th through 12th grade), I’ve always relied on the CRAAP Test (pdf) from California State University Chico. As wonderful a tool as it is, the CRAAP Test has a sophistication (despite its name) that makes it inaccessible for the 5th through 7th grade. (Perhaps at this point I should pause to let you know that my school, while co-ed, is predominantly boys – they make up about 88% of our student population. F: Is the site Friendly to the eyes? Like this:
On student scrutiny: two strategies We’re focusing a lot of attention these days of helping students determine credibility. For many of us, this is not a hot new topic. I dug around a bit and dusted off a couple of tools that, I think, stand the test of time. needs. This Current Events Analysis Scaffold forces thinking beyond the Ws. And then there’s my magic bullet. Evaluative, annotated works cited sections require and inspire the development of critical research and evaluation skills. Here’s the document we used to guide students through their annotations: Evaluative, Annotated Works Cited (High School) Annotations frequently include brief, two-sentence summaries. Check with your teacher to see which of the following elements you should include in your annotations: Author’s credentials (these may be contextual–relative to the format, situation or information need)Intended audience (For whom was this work produced and why?) Example of an evaluative annotation: Katz, Jon. Annotations for elementary and middle school students:
Don't Get Faked by the News Recently California State Assemblyman Gomez introduced AB 155, which states: “This bill would require the Instructional Quality Commission to develop, and the state board to adopt, revised curriculum standards and frameworks for English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science that incorporate civic online reasoning, as defined.” The impetus of this bill is the proliferation of fake news, as evidenced in 2016. While fake news has always been part of the (dis)information picture, social media and campaign documents have highlighted its impact. The 2016 Stanford report on evaluating information found that most students, even in higher education, have difficulty discerning online media such as fake news. Schools need to insure that their students become information and communications technology (ICT) literate. As part of my work, I manage California State University’s ICT Literacy Project, which facilitates faculty incorporation of ICT literacy into the curriculum.
Newspapers: Fact Sheet Last updated June 2016 For newspapers, 2015 might as well have been a recession year. Weekday circulation fell 7% and Sunday circulation fell 4%, both showing their greatest declines since 2010. Audience Weekday circulation experienced a decline not seen since the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession. Newspaper circulation declines for second consecutive year in 2015 Copy and paste the below iframe code into your own website to embed this chart. Note: Due to a change in AAM’s reporting period, comparisons from 2003 to 2014 are based on six-month averages for the period ending Sept. 30, while comparisons for 2014-15 are based on three-month averages for the period ending Dec. 31. Pew Research Center Amid these declines, print remains a vital part of newspapers’ distribution picture. Survey data reinforce the heavy reliance on the print product. Print-only still most common way of reading newspapers Economics Advertising revenue sees biggest drop since 2009 News investment Ownership Digital
Social Media Superstar Finalists Announced! Acknowledging the role social media plays in school library promotion, AASL has launched a new recognition program – Social Media Superstars. Nominated and endorsed by their peers, the program will recognize school library professionals who enrich the profession and its work on behalf of students by sharing information, expertise, ideas, encouragement, dialog and inspiration widely via a variety of social media channels. After an open nomination period, the Social Media Recognition Task Force is proud to announce the following finalists in each category. Through April 14, members of the school library community and the public are invited to post endorsements of their personal superstar by leaving a comment on each category’s post. Be sure to visit each of the seven hyperlinked category postings to read information about all the finalists and get links to their social media platforms. We want to hear from you! Sensational Student Voice Advocacy Ambassador Tech Troubadour Program Pioneer
Patterns of Deception - Politics Welcome to FlackCheck.org’s Detecting Patterns of Deception, the beta version of a new page designed to help viewers spot and debunk slippery moves in politics. Watch videos on the Climate Change Debate, the Sequester Debate, the Affordable Care Act Debate, the Gun Debate and the Immigration Debate to see patterns of deception in contemporary debates. On the page, we parse misleading political communication into six main categories. Misunderstanding the Process identifies ways in which misleading assumptions about the nature and extent of executive or legislative power drive problematic promises, attacks and self-congratulatory communication. Misleading Use Of Language features ways in which politicians exploit the ambiguities and connotations in words to prompt unjustified conclusions. Misleading Audio/Visual Cuing illustrates how pictures and sound can be manipulated to elicit false inferences. False Logic covers common errors in argument that lead audiences to faulty conclusions.
Teaching Information Literacy Now Last week, a new study from Stanford University revealed that many students are inept at discerning fact from opinion when reading articles online. The report, combined with the spike in fake and misleading news during the 2016 election, has school librarians, including me, rethinking how we teach evaluation of online sources to our students. How can we educate our students to evaluate the information they find online when so many adults are sharing inaccurate articles on social media? While social media isn’t the only reason for the surge in fake news over the last 10 years, it’s certainly making it harder for information consumers of every age to sort through fact and fiction. As articles about the Stanford study get shared around Facebook, I have two thoughts. One, I have to teach this better. In follow-up lessons, we use the CARS strategy to evaluate other websites in order to rank their usefulness. Rethinking how we teach evaluation Read laterally. Keep it non-political.