An average day for me in terms of reading and utilizing media is scrolling through: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For the most part I use Twitter in a professional sense. I follow fellow educators and schools’ Twitter accounts. Facebook is more so for news, links to parenting blogs and recipes. I only recently started using Instagram to follow local businesses and fitness enthusiasts.As far as new sources I mostly follow regional and national news pages. I don’t subscribe to anything internationally.
My strategies for analyzing and validating information are to search and see if there are more than one source on the topic and news source. During our class this week Alec mentioned the term “reading laterally” in our last class. Basically, it means that when analyzing a source you need to look beyond the source to an outside party. This makes sense to me, but I am concerned with people or students who might.
Gif via Giphy
The following video was shared in our class this week and is an excellent resources for teaching students to be able to identified fake news, and to critically analyze what they read. One part of the video that I really like is the 5 C’s of critical consuming: context, credibility, construction, corroboration and compare. I think this is a great tactic for students, or anyone who is looking for a concrete way to analyze a source of information.
This next video I found is a fun take on some headlines that have been around in the news recently. The host asks random participants if they believe certain news stories are real or fake.While some of the headlines were actually in news and media they were fake. It is interesting how the host highlights that although they seem real due to presentation, reputation and source they are in fact fake.
This quiz was shared by my colleague Kelsie is an excellent teaching resource – The New York Times weekly news quiz for students. This would be a great teaching tool for anyone learning about fake news and the media.
Here are some of my questions:
- What are some ways you have taught, or have heard of others teaching students ways to identify fake news?
- What are some predictions you have about how fake news will impact our youth?
Thanks for reading!
Amy B 
I loved the videos you shared.
The Five C’s are critical to our analysis of media consumption and Headlines often misleading.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway here is the importance to read beyond the headlines (and of course the article, as you stated in your blog).
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