Actor Denzel Washington said, “If you don’t watch the news, you’re uninformed. If you watch the news, you’re misinformed.” Is this true of our news media today? Is journalism alive or is it dead? There is always a rebuttal. We face the challenging question… “What is true?” This seems to sum up the situation in our world today with the challenges of seeking out reliable sources and information. If this is the challenge among us educators, how more challenging is it for our students.
Our current technological world has offered up a variety of Web 2.0 tools that help grow our understanding of the world around us. We can learn about any topic at any time in any media. However, trying to guide students through a sea of resources is challenging. Many of these resources are good, but many are just bad. Some are just full of fake news!
Fortunately, Google has recently expanded its digital safety and citizenship curriculum for children. This expansion by Google involves media literacy. This assists students in spotting fake news and other false content. Perez (2019) states, “The company is launching six new media literacy activities for the curriculum that will help teach kids things like how to avoid a phishing attack, what bots are, how to verify that information is credible, how to evaluate sources, how to identify disinformation online, spot fake URLs, and more” (Perez, 2019).
Involving such educational content to help students in the effective and proper use of technology tools can better prepare students to make the most of the technologies available. This is so especially critical today with phishing scams, bots, suspicious emails or texts, and click bate tactics by many counterfeits.
Providing good and effective training to recognize valid sources and information can better assist students in their seeking out reliable sources that are as unbiased as possible and backed by other reliable sources to produce informed minds fostering an environment that is highly credible.
Source:
Perez, Sarah. “Google's New Media Literacy Program Teaches Kids How to Spot Disinformation and Fake News.” TechCrunch, TechCrunch, 24 June 2019, techcrunch.com/2019/06/24/googles-new-media-literacy-program-teaches-kids-how-to-spot-disinformation-and-fake-news/.
It's amazing how perfectly that quote from Denzel Washington explains our culture today. I had no idea that Google was offering a digital safety and citizenship curriculum. That's amazing! I know as a teacher I discuss spotting faking news with students or poor websites, but I don't get too deep into it in first grade, because my students aren't really searching the web by themselves. However, I can see how important this is. I think it's awesome that a power hitter like Google is taking it seriously and helping steer students in the right direction. This is a skill they will use the rest of their lives.
ReplyDeleteI also was not aware that Google was implementing literacy activities to avoid fake news and false content. As a second grade teacher, I don't often think of the difficulties older students would have navigating their way around the web when researching. For example, my students are limited in what they are permitted to use (ducksters, getepic, brainpopjr, etc.). I typically do not have issues of click bait and unrelated links, but I can see how this Google capability will be beneficial to educators and older students. Thank you for sharing!
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