It's a jungle out there when it comes to searching for news and information online. A simple search can result in links that appear equally valid but could vary in accuracy, from a reputable newspaper's reported article to a spoof site that includes outright lies. For young students, finding reliable information can be a challenge.
To bridge this gap, in early 2009 the News Literacy Project started bringing seasoned journalists into secondary school classrooms to help teenagers and preteens evaluate and create reliable information. The program is now in five schools, in Bethesda, Maryland, plus New York City and Chicago, and hopes to extend to Los Angeles by 2010. (Contact the News Literacy Project to explore bringing the program to your school.)
Visiting news professionals work with students to answer four questions:
To answer these questions, students create projects that vary from a Monopoly-esque board game called Speechopoly, where players land on and purchase spaces representing First Amendment cases, to a mock television show that cautions viewers not to accept everything they read on Wikipedia. (See high school students at Bethesda's Walt Whitman High School work on model news-literacy projects in the YouTube video embedded below.)
Evaluating information online is an important digital-age skill. Google research scientist Daniel Russell estimates that students can access roughly a million times more content through Internet searches than previous generations could find at a university library.
"Most students today don't have the tools to navigate a way among the tsunami of sources of information available of widely varying purpose, accountability, and reliability," says Alan Miller, the News Literacy Project's founder and executive director, who is also a former investigative reporter. "In the information age, everyone has to learn to think like a journalist."
To that goal, the News Literacy Project provided the following tips for your students to use while evaluating information:
Links:
[1] http://www.edutopia.org/malaika-costello-dougherty-content
[2] http://www.edutopia.org/news-article-directory-timely-tips
[3] http://www.newsliteracyproject.org
[4] http://www.thenewsliteracyproject.org/journalists/
[5] mailto:info@thenewsliteracyproject.org
[6] http://en.wikipedia.com
[7] http://sites.google.com/site/dmrussell
[8] http://www.factcheck.org
[9] http://www.snopes.com
[10] http://www.edutopia.org/media-literacy-critical-thinking-tips
[11] http://www.edutopia.org/whats-next-2008-media-literacy
[12] http://www.edutopia.org/collaboration-age-technology-will-richardson
[13] http://www.edutopia.org/media-literacy-skills-video
[14] http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-introduction-video
[15] http://www.edutopia.org/citizen-schools-after-school-program-video