Information Literacy Resources

Hey everyone!

I stumbled across a post from a few years ago asking "How do we know if it's real or fake news?" that prompted me to check out what resources are out there to help develop information literacy skills in learners.

Based on some looking around, we've compiled them in a blogpost that provides a range of resources from GCFLearnFree.org, iCivics, ProCon.org, and Stanford History Education Group. All of these free resources provide opportunities for developing information + media literacy skills in a variety of ways—from bite-sized introductions of concepts to full-scale game simulations! The blog gives brief overviews of each and how they might be used with students.

In the near future, CrowdED Learning intends to provide CCRS alignments to iCivics, who in addition to having a great game mentioned in the blog also has an impressive number of teacher lessons and resources. 

Does anyone use any of the resources I listed with their students? I'd love to learn more about how educators are using these resources to develop concepts of information literacy with their learners. 

Comments

Hello,

I use game formats to teach my students to spot fake news. I have used Factitious factitious.augamestudio.com and Bad News getbadnews.com which is more popular with my students because you play the bad actor. These two are also easily done in an hour with intro and follow up which is the time frame I have. I also mix up different levels of our ABE students to play in groups. Fake it to make it is another one but I am less familiar with it.

Karen Gale

Hello Karen, and others,

I tried out Factitious. It's easy to use, fun and well-made. It's a good way to raise news quality questions. In their small groups, do your students discuss the evidence for their opinions before swiping left (for fake) or right (for real) news? Do they advance along the path to assessing more difficult examples?

This is a great approach to exploring the quality of news articles; the comments, even when you get an answer correct, provide additional criteria for judging news sources. For example, they said Buzzfeed is a real news source but because sometimes their reporters hasten to post they don't always get their facts right. I like that because it enlarges the discussion to raise more subtle criteria than just "real" or "fake". Another useful comment was that just because you don't believe someone who was quoted in the article doesn't mean the article was fake.  With close attention to the comments from playing these games for a while, a student could write a compelling essay on  "How to Judge news articles!"

David J. Rosen

 

Karen!!

Thanks so much for sharing. I'm excited to check these out a little bit more :)

What kinds of discussions do you lead with students before, during or after? I'm interested in getting a sense of what their reflections are on the games and how they apply to their everyday lives. 

Jeff

Karen....thanks again for sharing these great resources! They prompted me to dig a little deeper for some more resources, and this has resulted in CrowdED Learning's newest skill directory—Information Literacy (it's tucked away under 21st Century competencies)! Nearly half of these resources came from suggestions just this past month from educators in response to our original blog post. So cool!