Teaching students how to tell Fake News from Real News

Colleagues,

I am considering an online group project for adult basic skills (including ESOL/ESL) teachers who want to share strategies for teaching their students how to tell the difference between fake news and real news web sites, and perhaps other social media and news media venues. If you are interested in joining this project, let me know. We would assemble collections of fake news sites (I have one already, but we want to add to it.) We would also assemble a collection of real news sites. We would discuss what tips to include in (a) lesson(s) on this. Then, teachers would give their students between one and three news sites a week and ask them to evaluate and decide if each news site was real or fake. We would discuss together online what the emerging issues are in trying to teach adult learners how to discern what news is real and what is fake.  Some of the teachers involved in this project may already have class websites, such as a Facebook private group or a Schoology, Edmodo or Google web site. If you don't already have a class website you will need to create one for this project. Those I mentioned, and a few other learning websites, are free.

If there are enough people who are interested I will create this online group in early 2017. If you are interested let me know.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

Comments

Hi All,

Thanks for this initiative, David. Eli Pariser, the author of "The Filter Bubble" and lots of others have co-edited an excellent resource on responses to the fake news epidemic.

There's also a lively recent (diffuse) dialogue about how to define 'fake news' in a way that clarifies the problem and does not unnecessarily privilege certain sources. For example, people point to the list published by the Washington Post as problematic in both content and provenance. Rebuilding the Enlightenment stone by stone is going to be hard work, and clearly, educators of all sorts are essential.