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From ASCD Smart News via the Seattle Times: News you can use: Infographic walks you through 10 questions to detect fake News: Ten questions for fake news
Peter Adams, the senior vice president for educational programs at NLP, said the worksheet was created in late November, when concerned teachers began to ask the organization how to best address fake news in their classrooms.
“Misinformation is being spread in ways it hasn’t been,” Adams said. And it’s taking a toll on students. Around the same time NLP released its infographic, a team of Stanford researchers released a study that revealed widespread inability to verify information among middle-schoolers, high-schoolers and even college students.
Being skeptical is only half the battle when evaluating news sources. The worksheet’s first question asks the reader to gauge his or her emotional reaction to an article.
“Confirmation bias is a powerful thing,” Adams said. “We like for students to stop and think, ‘Hold on: Is this making you angry?’”
For teachers interested in accessing more news-literacy resources, NLP is piloting a virtual platform called Checkology, where teachers and students can access about a dozen different lessons digitally, many of which are taught by journalists in the field. One of the activities on the platform, “Be the Editor,” gives students a lesson about news judgment: They’re given 20 stories and asked to feature only five of them on a mock website. Other topics explored include social-media algorithms and citizen watchdogs.
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