#333 – A Media Literacy Toolkit for Election Season

#333 — A Media Literacy Toolkit for Election Season

AVID Open Access
10 min

Keywords
students, resources, literacy, news, media literacy, misinformation, lesson, site, election season, topics, fact, media, videos, activities, snopes, grades, lesson plans, collection, classroom, election

Paul Beckermann  0:01  

Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music  0:06  

Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann  0:16  

The topic of today’s episode is A Media Literacy Toolkit for Election Season. As election day draws near, it’s nearly impossible to escape the blitz of campaign ads, media commentary, and social media threads about politics. The constant flood of information can be overwhelming. It can also be hard to cut through the noise and determine what is truth and what is spin, and there’s a lot of spin. This is a hard task for us as adults who have life experience to draw upon. For our students, who have much less real-world context, discerning fact from falsehood can be even more difficult, and in a democracy where voters choose leaders based on the information available to them, it’s important that we have accurate information upon which to base our decisions. Now, as a former journalism teacher and library media specialist, media and news literacy has long been at the top of my priority list. I’m passionate about the need to help students become well-informed citizens by being news and media literate. In a time when the average American consumes up to 12 hours of media per day, we need to be able to evaluate what we’re seeing and hearing, separate fact from fiction, and learn to identify deepfakes, misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and AI-generated content. That’s a tall order, but with a concerted effort, I believe we can make a difference and empower our students to be more media literate. So in today’s episode, I’m going to share five of my favorite media and news literacy resources that you can use to get started. You can use these for your own learning and also with your students. As election day draws near, it’s the perfect time to dive into this collection of resources.

Transition Music  2:03  

Here are your five, here are your five, here are your five tips.

Paul Beckermann  2:09  

The first resource is the highly reviewed Common Sense Education. They have a collection of resources they call their “Digital Citizenship Curriculum.” In this collection, you’ll find a catalog of lessons that are searchable by topic and grade level. Each one includes a full lesson plan as well as the resources you’ll need to teach the lesson, things like slideshows, handouts, videos, and quizzes. Within the digital citizenship curriculum, you’ll find a subcategory called “News and Media Literacy.” I specifically suggest looking at this one. The lessons are broken down by grade level. For example, you can find a lesson called, “How do you know something you see or hear is true?” in the K-3 grade band. In grade four, you can find a lesson that introduces the rights and responsibilities of media creators. That’s a great way for students to see themselves as both producers as well as consumers of information. And then in grades 5-9, there’s a shift to news literacy that focuses on finding credible information, processing breaking news, and identifying hoaxes and fakes. And then in grades 10-12, there’s a more nuanced dive into topics like challenging confirmation bias, or clickbait advertising and disinformation practices, as well as the impacts of filter bubbles on our information ecosystems. These are all really important topics that have been put into well-crafted lessons.

The second online teaching resource that you may want to check out is called NewseumED. The site describes their purpose as “strengthening civil society through First Amendment and media literacy education.” That’s a perfect mission for election season. On this site, you can browse free resources for fighting fake news and developing your students’ media literacy skills. These resources include thousands of standards-aligned lesson plans, digital artifacts, videos, historical events, interactives, and other free resources. Here’s a little sampling of what you’ll find. Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy. This is described as a collection of road-tested tools of journalism. And within this collection, you can choose from topics like, “Is it news?,” “Is it fair?,” and effective online search strategies–all important topics. Another one is, “Is This Story Share-worthy? A Flow Chart.” This is a unique resource because it guides students through a decision-making process using a step-by-step flow chart. Students answer questions that are listed on the informational poster to gauge the value of a news story and then decide whether it deserves to be linked, shared, or retweeted. That’s an increasingly important real life skill. Another resource on the site is “Evidence: Do the Facts Hold Up?” With this resource, students analyze an article and then work to verify the evidence presented in it to determine whether they can trust that information. Another great real world skill. And a fourth resource on this site is “Evaluating Election Ads.” This one’s really timely, considering it’s election season, and in this activity, students examine some of the techniques that political campaigns use in their ads to persuade voters.

A third website that I recommend is called the News Literacy Project. This is really one of my favorite news and media literacy sites. I love their tagline, which is, “You have the power to stop misinformation.” The site’s been created by a nonpartisan education nonprofit, to “Ensure all students are skilled in news literacy before they graduate high school, giving them the knowledge and ability to participate in civic society as well-informed critical thinkers.” Here are a few highlights from this site. The first is Checkology. Checkology is described as “a free e-learning platform with engaging, authoritative lessons on subjects like news media bias, misinformation, conspiratorial thinking, and more.” Through the activities available in Checkology, learners develop the ability to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources, and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods. To use this free and interactive lesson platform, teachers simply set up their account, create a class, add students, and then assign the lessons that they feel will best fit their needs. There are many options to choose from, and each lesson choice contains content, engaging videos from subject matter experts, interactive formative assessments, and pre- and post-tests to track student progress, including access to analytics.

The Sift weekly newsletter is another part of the News Literacy Project. It’s their free weekly newsletter. The Sift is delivered to your email inbox each week during the school year and includes the latest topics in news literacy, discussion prompts, teaching ideas, classroom guides, and a video series that features professional journalists. If you don’t want to subscribe, you can still browse through the content and previous issues right on the site. It’s a convenient way to get classroom ideas while staying tuned in to what’s happening in the area of media literacy and misinformation. The site also has an “Educator Resources” section. This resource library is searchable by grade levels, grades 4-12, and contains lesson plans, classroom activities, posters and infographics, quizzes, training materials, and videos for educators teaching news literacy. One really cool feature is a free Google Slideshow of quick bell-ringer activities called “Daily Do Now” slides. They’re quick, ready-to-use activities that you can plug right into your classroom. And then there’s a ‘Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024.” This is the News Literacy Project’s tool intended specifically to track election misinformation. They take a look at the falsehoods and misinformation in a number of categories such as candidate image, candidate popularity, conspiracy, platform and policy, and election integrity. If your students are studying the candidates and preparing for the election, this could be a really nice classroom tool.

The fourth resource is actually a collection of fact-checking websites. Let’s face it, it’s not very practical to research and verify every single claim we hear during election season. We’d be busy for hours. Fortunately, there are reputable organizations that are already fact-checking for us. These are great tools for ourselves and our students. Here are four the best ones. PolitiFact: PolitiFact states that its “core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting, and clear writing.” Factcheck.org: Factcheck.org describes themselves as a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Washington Post Fact Checker: This source is spearheaded by Glenn Kessler, an award-winning journalist with over 40 years of experience. He’s been the editor-in-chief of The Fact Checker since 2011. And Snopes. Snopes is the oldest and largest fact-checking website and has been fact-checking misinformation since 1994. Snopes says that it always documents its sources “so readers are empowered to do independent research and make up their own minds.”

And finally, I’m going to put in a plug for our very own AVID Open Access resources. During the past year, we’ve been building our own library of podcasts and articles about media and news literacy, and we built out a collection of resources called Media News Literacy. Topics include things like artificial intelligence, deepfakes and cheap fakes, protecting yourself from misinformation, and identifying disinformation. We even did an interview on Unpacking Education with Brittney Smith from The News Literacy Project. I encourage you to check that out. It’s really an insightful conversation. So, as you and your students work through election season, I really encourage you to check out some of these resources about media and news literacy. They can be really helpful and empowering.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit AvidOpenAccess.org and, specifically, check out the collection I mentioned called “Media and News Literacy.” And of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.