Digital & Media Literacy

Beers & Probst: Responsible Reading and Fake News By Kylene Beers & Robert Probst How do we teach kids across the grades to read responsibly? Close attention to an author’s words – the responsibility a reader shows to the text – implies and requires a responsibility to oneself as well as the words on the page. That responsibility consists not only of a willingness to acknowledge and defend one’s own thoughts and values, but to change our thinking when evidence or reason dictates. Brooklyn Public Library How long is the course? The course will take approximately 12 hours to complete. Course content is a mixture of video lectures and independent work. When does the course start and finish? This is a self-paced online course with no end date.

Protecting Your Online Reputation - INFOGRAPHIC You don't have to be running for president to care about your online reputation. Almost everything you do online is easy to track, especially when you're using social media sites. This infographic shows you how to manage your "e-reputation," perhaps saving you some embarrassment, or even your career. Gathered by digital marketing firm KBSD, it's a treasure trove of tips, techniques and information about what companies and individuals are looking for inside your personal profiles and social information, and what you can do to show off your best side to those who might want to find out unflattering things about you. It's not too late to protect yourself and polish up your online image.

Fake News: Recommendations - Media Literacy Clearinghouse If you read any news story about “fake news” in the past 18 months, you no doubt came across the phrase “media literacy.” From the various news stories and blog posts, I have compiled the following recommendations and advice. (NOTE: lesson plans, handouts and related videos are posted near the bottom of this list) Newest materials are posted last. Do you have suggestions for content that could be added here? Please consider sending it to me: fbaker1346@gmail.com

Digital Citizenship Discussion Cards – Dr. Kristen Mattson You can create a safe space for your students to engage in conversation about digital topics with though-provoking images and a variety of activities. Students of all ages can use the image/discussion cards I’ve created in a variety of ways. Asking students to group images and assign groups a label will force them to engage in discussion and analysis of the artwork in front of them. The questions on the back of the image cards can make great journal prompts, debate topics, and launches for research and inquiry projects. For more ideas, check out this post on using images as bell ringers across the content areas. You can also create your own digital citizenship discussion activities using the images I’ve curated here.

To Test Your Fake News Judgment, Play This Game : NPR Ed Fake news has been on Maggie Farley's mind further back than 2016 when President Trump brought the term into the vernacular. Farley, a veteran journalist, says we've had fake news forever and that "people have always been trying to manipulate information for their own ends," but she calls what we're seeing now "Fake news with a capital F." In other words, extreme in its ambition for financial gain or political power. "Before, the biggest concern was, 'Are people being confused by opinion; are people being tricked by spin?' " Now, Farley says, the stakes are much higher.

'Fiction is outperforming reality': how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth It was one of January’s most viral videos. Logan Paul, a YouTube celebrity, stumbles across a dead man hanging from a tree. The 22-year-old, who is in a Japanese forest famous as a suicide spot, is visibly shocked, then amused. “Dude, his hands are purple,” he says, before turning to his friends and giggling. “You never stand next to a dead guy?”

Library Creates Genius Bookmark To Teach Students How To Spot Fake News Though he's often wrong about his sources, President Trump is very right about one thing: there's a lot of fake news swirling around the internet these days. In fact, the problem has become so prevalent that many teachers are taking extra steps to ensure their students can tell which news is fake and which is real! For instance, Reddit user soldier4hire was at his local library when he noticed a unique bookmark. Arming their readers with knowledge, the library was distributing some awesome advice: when reading an article online, check the headline, author and URL.

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. She didn’t know how to use the shift key (and then declared that turning caps lock on and off was far superior and easier than using the shift key). Typing was taking a lot longer than expected and it was tiring her out. Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab It’s a great headline, isn’t it? As director of Data & Society Research Institute and author of It’s Complicated, danah boyd has a conflicted relationship with the media literacy community as is revealed in her post, “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” Indeed, researchers have found that media literacy can backfire when it’s taught badly.

Seven Ways to Identify Pseudoscience Original seven ways – © Relatively Interesting The use of psychobabble – words that sound scientific and professional but are used incorrectly, or in a misleading manner; Self-help books, folk and pop psychology, and motivational seminars often use psychobabble. How To Spot Fake News Critical thinking is a key skill in media and information literacy, and the mission of libraries is to educate and advocate its importance. Discussions about fake news has led to a new focus on media literacy more broadly, and the role of libraries and other education institutions in providing this. When Oxford Dictionaries announced post-truth was Word of the Year 2016, we as librarians realise action is needed to educate and advocate for critical thinking – a crucial skill when navigating the information society. IFLA has made this infographic with eight simple steps (based on FactCheck.org’s 2016 article How to Spot Fake News) to discover the verifiability of a given news-piece in front of you.

How to Spot Fake News Fake news is nothing new. But bogus stories can reach more people more quickly via social media than what good old-fashioned viral emails could accomplish in years past. Concern about the phenomenon led Facebook and Google to announce that they’ll crack down on fake news sites, restricting their ability to garner ad revenue. Fighting Fake News Librarians—whether public, school, academic, or special—all seek to ensure that patrons who ask for help get accurate information. Given the care that librarians bring to this task, the recent explosion in unverified, unsourced, and sometimes completely untrue news has been discouraging, to say the least. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of US adults are getting their news in real time from their social media feeds. These are often uncurated spaces in which falsehoods thrive, as revealed during the 2016 election.