#485 – Checkology: Helping Students Discern Truth

#485 — Checkology: Helping Students Discern Truth

AVID Open Access
9 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:00 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is Checkology: helping students discern truth. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to determine if content we see or hear in the media is true or if it’s misinformation. This information is coming at us from everywhere: websites, internet searches, social media, blogs, podcasts—anywhere you might access the news. Now AI is making that even more difficult. Believing misinformation or disinformation can be more than just embarrassing; it can be harmful. It might make us fall for a scam. It could lead us to believing in an untrue conspiracy theory. We could mistake an advertisement for news. We might end up purchasing something that is worthless. It might even persuade us to vote for a candidate for office based on false narratives.

In many ways, media literacy is becoming an essential skill. While most of us are aware of this concern, as well as being aware that there’s a need to teach our students these skills, it’s hard to know where to start or how to effectively teach your students how to navigate a media-rich world. In addition to that, few schools have courses for this, meaning that any media literacy must be integrated into existing class structures. To help with these challenges, the News Literacy Project has developed a free tool called Checkology. In today’s episode, I’m going to share a little bit about this tool so you can determine if it’s a good fit for your students in your classroom. Here is the tool for today. First off, what is Checkology and what is it for?

Checkology is a free virtual classroom and resource hub for teachers. While there is content available for students in grades K through 12, the lessons in the virtual classroom are targeted for grades 5 through 12. Here’s how Checkology introduces itself: “Checkology is now your one-stop shop for teaching news literacy. Once you register, you’ll find hundreds of free resources like quizzes, posters, downloadable lesson plans, and classroom slides. You’ll also gain access to our interactive classroom, where you can register your students and assign them the platform’s core interactive lessons and other activities. Track student progress using our online gradebook and assign lessons using our teacher dashboard.”

The News Literacy Project is also quick to point out that news literacy is an approach that teaches you how to think about news and information you encounter daily, not what to think. Key features of the program include the ability to set up an unlimited number of classes and student accounts. Within that environment, you’ll have access to over 250 teaching tools which are searchable and sortable. With that big-picture context in mind, let me count off 10 things I really like about this tool. Here is your list of tips.

Number one: Did I mention it’s free? Seldom can you find such a robust and well-designed product that is available at no cost. This is an intentional choice, as the News Literacy Project is driven to meet its mission of having all students graduate high school being media and news literate.

Number two: Easy account management. Checkology is designed to meet your needs and offers multiple ways to set up and manage accounts for teachers. You can set up a free account using your Google or Microsoft credentials or by entering an email and custom password. Students and rosters can be imported using Clever if your school uses that. If you don’t have Clever access, you can have students join with a link, or you can manually enter them. Again, you can create as many courses within this teacher account as you’d like.

Number three: Assigning courses is flexible. There are many fully developed courses available that you can assign to your classes. You can use courses as they are, or you can customize the experiences by removing or adding elements into the course outline. You can even assign students multiple courses at once so they can progress through a sequence of topics that have been chosen by you.

Number four: There are two delivery options. You can choose to have students work through the assigned courses independently, or you can guide them through as a full class. There’s a toggle switch in the teacher dashboard to choose your delivery preference. If you choose the guided approach, students still have access to the formative checks on their screens; they just don’t see the video content—you would guide that as a full-class experience.

Number five: Content experts. Each Checkology course is hosted by credible and engaging content experts. They might be university professors or possibly practitioners in the news journalism field. They share their messages with students on the screen via professionally produced video content. Each video clip is short and engaging, usually no more than two minutes long. This keeps students moving through the content without getting bored or restless.

Number six: Formative checks for understanding. As students work through the course, they will be stopped periodically to engage in the content. This might be an open-ended short answer question, or it could be an auto-scored quiz in the form of a multiple-choice question, matching exercise, or a drag-and-drop activity. For these auto-scored items, students get immediate feedback. For the open-ended responses, the input is designed to get students processing their own thoughts in terms of the new learning and also to set them up for an in-person class discussion.

Number seven: Real examples are used. As students are introduced to news literacy concepts, they are shown real-life examples from newspapers, TV shows, websites, and social media. The examples are interesting and engaging. Even in the formative assessment activities, students are asked to analyze and assess real examples, some of which they may have seen themselves before taking the course.

Number eight: There are over 20 courses available. These courses all focus on news and media literacy but are broken down into subtopics in that field. Some examples include Arguments and Evidence, Branded Content, Democracy’s Watchdog, Evaluating Science-Based Claims, Misinformation, and many more. Beyond the core lessons, there are modules for practicing and extending core skills, which could be brought in to customize the courses you’ve chosen.

Number nine: There are hundreds of additional teacher resources available as well. Beyond the Checkology course, there’s a library filled with media and news literacy resources that are searchable by topic, grade level, duration, type, and standard. For example, I can click on a topic like artificial intelligence, and I’ll be taken to a subpage that includes a reading guide, a student quiz, an infographic poster, instructional slides I can use in class, and many more resources. There’s even a word wall and a place to set up journalist classroom visits.

Number ten: The Sift. This last resource is the weekly newsletter from the News Literacy Project, and it’s called The Sift. You can click right on the website to read it online or subscribe to get emails each week. The newsletter includes relevant articles about current rumors and misinformation in the media, as well as classroom resources like “daily do-now” slides and featured news literacy topics.

Those are my top 10, but there’s even more, so I encourage you to get on the site and go explore for yourself. It feels like getting to the truth is becoming more elusive every day. With the impact of AI and more realistic deepfakes, our students are facing a world where they will need robust media literacy skills. Checkology is a fantastic tool to help empower them with those skills. It’s packaged in a way that’s not more work for teachers, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s free. I’d call that a win-win-win.

Paul Beckermann 8:19 To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, “AI in the K-12 Classroom,” 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.