Posted in 21st Century life, connected world problems, digital life and democracy, disinformation, fact-checking, fraudulent news, future tech employment, information credibility, social media

The Word Fake Really Can’t Describe the Word News

“It’s time to move past fake news,” suggests an August 30, 2019 editorial in the Toronto Star, which explains the need to amend or change the terminology, instead labeling made-up information as disinformation. The article points out that, while there has always been made up or exaggerated information, our contemporary digital world provides easy and efficient ways to spread disinformation.

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Social media makes it easy to promote disinformation. Photo by Tracy Le Blanc on Pexels.com

Best Quote:

Fake news is a misnomer. There is no “news” in it. And the term has become mere shorthand to dismiss anything with which the user of the phrase disagrees.

Quoting scholars including Kathleen Hall Jamieson, at the University of Pennsylvania, and David Runciman at Cambridge University, the Toronto Star editorial writers note that the digital revolution allows people to target various groups with disinformation. Moreover, the digital precision and speed of social media make it easier to challenge the cultural norms of democracy. Sometimes these challenges are designed to make people understand even less about democratic institutions. Continue reading “The Word Fake Really Can’t Describe the Word News”

Posted in 21st Century life, back-to-school, Back-to-school digital reading, digital wellness, parents and technology

Back to School: 2019-20 Digital Parenting Checklist

backpack picThis post includes a downloadable handout.

At the beginning of the school year, what can parents and teachers do to ensure that digital kids — with their hand-held devices, connected school activities, homework, and other online endeavors — get off to a good start?

Back-to-school preparation is more than school supplies, lunch boxes, and carpool arrangements. It also involves reviewing and articulating connected-life expectations with family members and working together to set up a family media plan that works for each person in the family.

Below are a few issues for parents and educators to consider as they seek to maintain quality in kids’ 21st Century digital lives during the 2019-2020 school year. Raising strong and competent digital citizens requires teamwork and immense effort — at home and at school.

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Download this PDF handout.

1.  Make decisions about screen time in your family. Altogether, as a family, figure out your plan and then think about how you will re-address your decisions as the year progresses. Check out the 2018 article, How Much Screen Time Affects Kids’ Bodies and Brains at Forbes. Family issues to consider might include:

  • What limits will your family set up for digital devices, electronic games, and television?
  • If your child uses a personal device from school, are you aware of specific teacher expectations and time commitments?
  • What else would you like your child to spend time doing?
  • A good article for parents and educators (and a great back-to-school piece to share with parents) is on the NPR website — Kids and Screen Time-What Does the Research Say?   

Continue reading “Back to School: 2019-20 Digital Parenting Checklist”

Posted in digital life, evaluating news, fact-checking, information credibility, media literacy, parents and technology

7 Games & Simulations that Can Strengthen Fact-Checking Skills

7 fact checking games
Click to read about the games at the Poynter fact-checking newsletter.

Today everyone needs to get better at fact-checking –a critical digital world skill. Interestingly, as we parents and educators help young people learn to distinguish what is true from what is not, we quickly discover that many adults need as much or more practice than the kids.

Online games and simulation activities can help people supercharge their fact-checking and evaluation abilities and even have a bit of fun doing it. Recently the weekly Poynter fact-checking newsletter, Factually, featured a list of seven of these games that can help people fine-tune their content evaluation skills. While each of the games is different from the others, all of them aim to help individuals gain the confidence and competence to determine what is true and what is misinformation or disinformation. All can be good teaching tools.

I recently wrote a blog post about Factitious, a game that is included in Poynter’s list, but the other six games look like they have enormous potential when it comes to helping kids and adults practice and understand a lot more about the need to fact-check and how to go about it.

Posted in evaluating news, media literacy, media literacy quiz, parents and technology

How Well Can You Identify News That’s Not True?

Screen Shot 2019-04-19 at 7.59.02 PMI am still having great fun with Factitiousa quiz that tests my ability to distinguish real news from the fake stuff. It’s a resource that can help individuals fine-tune their media literacy skills,  assisting them as they consider the truthfulness (or lack of truthfulness) of a news story.

I wrote about Factitious in June 2017, but recently I went back to the site and discovered that the game has expanded, with updated news for each year and a few more news evaluation levels. Last week I asked a group of friends play the game, and we all agreed it is a helpful teaching tool.     Continue reading “How Well Can You Identify News That’s Not True?”

Posted in digital citizenship, fact-checking, fake news, media literacy, parents and technology

What If We Just Stopped Using the Words FAKE NEWS?

screen-shot-2017-02-19-at-10-06-52-amTonight I looked at yet another post that yet another person labeled as Fake News (it wasn’t).  

What if we just stopped using the term fake news and gradually transitioned to other words? How much media literacy change would occur from this simple vocabulary adjustment?

  • Misinformation
  • Disinformation
  • Confirmed/Unconfirmed news
  • Authoritative news
  • Substantiated news
  • Verified or validated/unvalidated news
  • Corroborated news
  • Proven/Unproven news
  • Authenticated news
  • Reliable
  • Unambiguous news

Just wondering…

Posted in 21st Century Learning, digital learning resources, fact-checking, fake news, image evaluation, information credibility, media literacy

MediaWise: A Cool Initiative for Teens

describing-real-newsIf you are searching for an educational media literacy initiative that focuses on the mechanics of fact-checking, take a few minutes to learn about MediaWise, a project of the Poynter Institute.

Eighteen teenagers from around the United States are part of a MediaWise fact-checking network, learning about strategies and techniques that can help them identify misinformation. They participate in training that helps them understand how to determine what’s true and what’s not, and then the teens can set about investigating on their own. Finally, and this is the cool part, after the students decide whether the information is true or false, they create videos that illustrate the process they used to evaluate the information.

I’ve embedded two of the videos below.             Continue reading “MediaWise: A Cool Initiative for Teens”

Posted in 21st Century life, 21st Century teaching, American history, and media, digital learning, media literacy, museums, parents and technology

Video Tour of the Newseum’s News History Gallery

bill-of-rights-cropWatch this inside video tour (below) of the Newseum’s updated News History Gallery. The exhibit features 400-plus historical newspapers, newsbooks, and magazines —  documents that reported some of the greatest and most amazing news stories. You can visit the Newseum’s web site to explore some of the other exhibits without leaving your home or school.

After you watch the video, check out and sign up for NewseumEd, a site that is filled with ideas for teaching First Amendment and media literacy and with resources that can be easily downloaded. These are terrific connected world teaching tools that can be used in 21st Century classrooms.     Continue reading “Video Tour of the Newseum’s News History Gallery”