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The CRAAP test has been a standby strategy for teaching information literacy for a long time. Besides the fact that K-12 students love the fact that they get to say the word "CRAAP," it has offered a reliable template for students and teachers to use to tease out resource reliability. But as our online lives get more complicated and sources aren't as easy to identify, much less define, the CRAAP test hasn't been working as well for me and my students this year. The election highlighted how opinion, truth, and facts are complicated. Emotions are running high in all camps, and more and more of us are sharing things without a thorough look/see. "Filter bubbles" (see: https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles) allow us to stay well inside our own world view, which can then increase the unwillingness to dig deeper to understand the source and intent of any piece of information.

So, early this school year it became apparent that my fall-back lessons using CRAAP and other source evaluation tools were not working. While CRAAP answers the questions that apply to resource awareness, it wasn't helping students look at their own reactions to what they were reading, and critically figure out what and how it might apply to their investigations. Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose skimmed the surface of the resource. ("Yes, this was written in 2016 (check!), and it's about my topic (check!), it's got a .org (check!) and it looks accurate to me (check!) and finally.. (almost done!) the purpose of this site is to inform me about (check!)"). When students were asked to think deeper about the questions that CRAAP asked and required to write longer analysis, they balked. Most students were unwilling to take the time to dig deeper. They continued to rely on the same rules of thumb that we'd been teaching through the years and that allowed them to check off items. It was time to think differently.
I struggled with ways to re-create a new acronym to add in the elements I thought have been missing... to no avail. I tried:

How does this capture my: Attention
What does it want me to think: Think
What does it want me to do: Action
Where does it come from: Source/Host
Who created this: Authorship
What facts or evidence does it give: create a list of notes

Too long - not quite what I wanted, I thought they should check for:

Pay Attention! (Is this clickbait? Blazing headlines?)
How do you feel now? (How does this information want me to react?)
Do this! (Once I've reacted... what does it want me to do?)
Sponsors (Who ARE these people?)
Facts (Can they back it up with facts?)

While it was fun trying to squeeze an interesting acronym together, the focus of these questions was on student feeling instead of critically looking at a document or site and discerning intent, perspective, or authority, and it still allowed for the check-off mentality.

In the middle of this thinking, I was delightfully and wonderfully pleased to receive a serendipitous email from my colleague, Nathan Libecap (Casa Grande High School) with the subject line: "AWESOME." He sent a single link to an e-book titled Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers by Michael Caulfield of Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington. Caulfield discusses "4 moves and a habit" that one can use to mitigate that reflexive re-tweeting and look closer at our information. He too felt that the roads we've been taking to help students understand their information was much longer than it needed to be. He covers a wide variety of strategies and includes excellent activities that can be added to classroom use-and they are incredibly fun to do. The ideas made such good sense that I fiddled around with them and I created a little graphic that I've posted in the library and plan on using with my next library and information resources class. Here they are:

Check for previous fact checking work already done (e.g. Snopes)

Swim upstream to the source - Trace the claim to the source

Read laterally (check your article against other sources - use TABS to read across the web)

If you're getting lost...

Circle around - go back to what you know... and start again from there.

Caulfield also points out that an important piece of source evaluation strategy is to retrain our natural habit to respond to things quickly, utilizing the emotion of the moment. Feeling angry, excited, pleased, or other emotions can incite one to pass along a piece of information that is not true. Instead, we should consider adopting a new habit: stop for a moment and check emotions before taking any action. Taking one of the strategies from the cyberbullying world, I added:
TAKE 5
to the bulletin board display. Students who have participated in health class lessons on online etiquette know this phrase too "take a moment to think before you post." In this information literacy context, when reading news, tweets, click-bait, and even academic materials, that might contain un-verified claims or particular biases that seem so shareable,"taking 5" can go a long way to stopping these claims. Checking out what others have discovered, swimming downstream to the real source of the information, and double-checking who these people are before passing it along or adding it to a project paper or presentation will go a long way to keeping facts in the forefront.

More often than not students just want to get an answer and add it to their work. Equally often we all want to pass on those bits that intrigue or infuriate us to our friends. Making a habit of taking only 5 minutes to double-check facts, stories, and/or authorship will go a long way to creating a slightly more sane information world. What I like about these 4 moves is how quickly they can be accomplished and how easily they can be incorporated into a larger evaluation and information literacy instruction framework. I look forward to thinking about these strategies in the coming school year.

Categories: Blog Topics, Student Engagement/ Teaching Models, Technology

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What IS this document I'm looking at? | Knowledge Quest

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The CRAAP test has been a standby strategy for teaching information literacy for a long time. Besides the fact that K-12 students love the fact that they get to say the word "CRAAP," it has offered a reliable template for... Read More ›

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Evaluating Websites & "The FART Test" Slideshow

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Evaluating Websites & "The FART Test" Slideshow

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Website Evaluation: Fake News & FART Test

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Common Sense Media Lesson: Identifying High Quality Sites

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Common Sense Media Lesson: Identifying High Quality Sites

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Common Sense is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century.

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Clickbait Bias Satire Clickbait Bias Satire

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What is it? Name that Fake News! FAKE NEWS Bias: Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. Watch video: "Fake News on Facebook" https://www.channelone.com/blog_post/lesson-plan-how-to-spot-fake-news/ Clickbait: An eye-catching link on a website which encourages people to read on.

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Nearpod Lesson: Become an Internet Sleuth

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Nearpod Lesson: Become an Internet Sleuth

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Students will identify guidelines for evaluating the credibility of content they find online.

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The News Literacy Project works with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust.

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Fact-checking journalism is the heart of PolitiFact. Our core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing. The reason we publish is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.

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Fact-checking journalism is the heart of PolitiFact. Our core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing. The reason we publish is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.

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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

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NY Times: "Evaluating Sources in a Post-Truth World"

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NY Times: "Evaluating Sources in a Post-Truth World"

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SLJ: "Teaching Information Literacy Now"

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SLJ: "Teaching Information Literacy Now"

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By Laura Gardner on

Last week, a new study from Stanford University revealed that many students are inept at discerning fact from opinion when reading articles online. The report, combined with the spike in fake and misleading news during the 2016 election, has school librarians, including me, rethinking how we teach evaluation of online sources to our students. How can we educate our students to evaluate the information they find online when so many adults are sharing inaccurate articles on social media?

While social media isn't the only reason for the surge in fake news over the last 10 years, it's certainly making it harder for information consumers of every age to sort through fact and fiction. As articles about the Stanford study get shared around Facebook, I have two thoughts. One, I have to teach this better. And two, as information literacy experts, we school librarians are more important than ever. Joyce Valenza offers timely tools in her news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world.

Until now, I have taught web evaluation the same way every year: I start by introducing students to the CARS method of web evaluation (similar to the CRAAP test), using tools to evaluate credibility, accuracy, reasonableness, and factual support. I offer up sites for them to evaluate (all fake, such as Save the Guinea Worm, DHMO, and Mankato, MN). Many kids figure out that the sites are fake, and that leads to a discussion about how publishing on the web is different from print. " Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources," from the New York Times has many examples of fake posts on social media, as well as lesson ideas.

In follow-up lessons, we use the CARS strategy to evaluate other websites in order to rank their usefulness. I teach students about websites such as Snopes.com and Politifact.com, resources to fact-check Internet rumors and sensational "news" they see. In addition, we spend some time looking at domain names and URLs.

I end the unit with a presentation and discussion of the reliability of information from news sources I gathered during a two-week teacher training workshop I attended at the Center for News Literacy Summer Institute at Stony Brook University. My presentation runs through how the dissemination of the news has changed over time, our current challenges in a world of information overload, and the blurring of the meaning of "journalist" in an era of social media and blogs. All this takes around four to five lessons, which I teach in my stand-alone sixth grade library skills class (I see students once every six-day cycle).

Rethinking how we teach evaluation

Teaching evaluation of information has never been so critical, and I'm thinking fast while updating my unit before relaunching it in January. Students can't rely on "about us" pages of websites any longer. While educating them about how to evaluate websites that look accurate and mimic the news, I'll focus on these four points.

Read laterally. I'll spend more time teaching students how to Google or crosscheck an organization or "news" source or claim before believing or sharing information found online. "Reading laterally" in this way helps them discover if a source is biased or even completely fake. I can emphasize this as part of the CARS method, asking questions such as, "Is the author an authority on the subject?" and "Does the information on the site agree with other sources?"

Keep it non-political. So many current examples from the 2016 election season are hot-button issues that may open discussions we aren't ready for in our classrooms. I have found Snopes to be a good source for non-political examples of inaccurate web content. For example, here is a completely fabricated article about Clint Eastwood rejecting the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Talk about social media more. The pitfalls of social media can't be ignored, and we have to discuss rules for sharing or re-sharing articles. I like the "triple check" rule from CNN's Brian Stelter. Lesson 13 from the Center for News Literacy teaching materials has some good examples from Hurricane Sandy and other news events when inaccurate social media posts were overshared.

Switch it up. An alternate way to evaluate sources that I'm considering teaching my students is the IMVAIN method. It might be a better fit now than CARS, given how our news sources are changing. Here's an example of how a New York City middle school uses it.

The IMVAIN analysis weighs the following factors:

Is the material Independent or self-interested?

Does it have Multiple sources or only one?

Does it Verify, or assert?

Is it Authoritative/Informed vs. uninformed?

Are sources Named or unnamed?

Embracing the opportunity

As challenging as it is to teach about web evaluation without getting political, I can't help but see this as an opportunity. In a time when school librarian positions are still being cut or undervalued around the country, this is a chance to talk about how critical our role really is. We have a chance to not only share our expertise with teachers in our schools, but also to show our personal networks on social media that this is what school librarians do; this is what we teach, and this is why every school needs a school librarian. We show students how to evaluate information in a world of information overload.

When I speak at my state's ESSA hearing next week, I will say that this is a large part of why my role is valued in my school. The town I live in does not have any school librarians in the district; the position was considered expendable because of all the resources on the Internet. But given the current state of affairs, perhaps people will finally see what we have known all along...that we're more important than ever.

2016 SLJ School Librarian of the Year finalist Laura Gardner is a National Board Certified Teacher in Library Media, a teacher librarian at Dartmouth (MA) Middle School, and a 2016 Touchcast Ambassador. She tweets at @LibrarianMsG, and you can follow her library on Instagram and Snapchat at @DMSLibrary366.

This article was featured in our free Extra Helping enewsletter.
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By Laura Gardner on Last week, a new study from Stanford University revealed that many students are inept at discerning fact from opinion when reading articles online. The report, combined with the spike in fake and misleading news during the 2016 election, has school librarians, including me, rethinking how we teach evaluation of online sources to our students.

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Common Sense Media: "How to Spot Fake News (And Teach Kids to be Media Savvy)"

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Common Sense Media: "How to Spot Fake News (And Teach Kids to be Media Savvy)"

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How to Spot Fake News (and Teach Kids to Be Media-Savvy)

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Clickbait, hyper-partisan opinion, and completely false information are running wild across the internet. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Huffington Post: "How to Recognize a Fake News Story"

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Huffington Post: "How to Recognize a Fake News Story"

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If you've been looking at Facebook lately, you may have seen that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, a town in Texas was quarantined due to a deadly disease and Germany just approved child marriage. To be clear, none of these events really happened ― but that didn't stop news of them from spreading like a virus.

Fake news articles ― especially throughout this election year ― have increasingly become a fixture on social media. These posts, designed to deceive, run rampant across the internet. Only later, if ever, do readers discover that the stories they shared may have been false.

The publication of blatantly inaccurate stories is certainly not new to the digital age, or even the analog era ― just check your local supermarket aisle for tabloids ― but what is new is how easy it is for a reader to scan a headline on Facebook, hit share and watch his 500 followers do the same.

In the final three months before the election, 20 top-performing fake news stories on Facebook outperformed 20 top-performing factual stories from 19 major media outlets in terms of engagement, according to a BuzzFeed study published last week.

As it stands, there are few checks and balances to prevent any outlet from posting an article that is made up of false facts. In the coming months social media platforms will need to address many broader questions, including what level of editorial control sites like Facebook should exercise over the content on their platforms.

After initially downplaying the problem, Facebook announced on Friday that it would begin seeking out ways to weed out some kinds of fake news from feeds. Google, too, said it plans to stop fake news sites from using its ad-selling service.

But part of stopping the spread of hoaxes and misinformation also falls on readers who email these articles to friends and family or post them on social media, lending these storiestheir own credibility.

In order to prevent the spread of fake news, here is a quick guide to spotting it.

1. Read Past The Headline

One way that fake news gets amplified is that busy readers may not look past the headline or opening paragraph before they decide to share an article. Fake news publishers sometimes exploit this tendency, writing the beginning of a story in a straightforward way before filling in the rest with obviously false information.

In other cases, clicking through to the article will reveal that the story really has nothing to do with the headline at all or provides nothing to back it up.

2. Check What News Outlet Published It

Unfamiliar websites plastered with ads and all-caps headlines should draw immediate skepticism. Googling a site's name and checking out other articles it posts should also help determine whether it's trustworthy.

Many fake news sites will outright say that they are satire or don't contain factual information, but others are made to mimic major news outlets. Check the URL names of pages that look suspect, making sure that it's not a hoax site that is pretending to be a trusted source.

3. Check The Publish Date And Time

Another common element in fake news is that old articles or events can resurface and lead people to believe they just happened. Checking the publish time stamp is something readers can quickly do to prevent being misled.

Sometimes, however, finding out when an event happened can take a bit more work ― such as when the date of an article is current, but the events described within it are old. Click through links and read carefully to determine when the event described actually happened.

4. Who Is The Author?

Looking at who wrote the article can reveal a lot of information about the news source. Searching through the author's previous articles can show whether they are a legitimate journalist or have a history of hoaxes.

5. Look At What Links And Sources Are Used

A lack of links or sources for claims in an article is an obvious warning sign that the post is likely false. Fake sites may also provide numerous links to sites that appear to back up their claims, but are themselves spreading misinformation. Check to see that claims supported by links actually come from reliable sources.

6. Look Out For Questionable Quotes And Photos

It's incredibly easy for fake news writers to invent false quotes, even attributing them to major public figures. Be skeptical of shocking or suspicious quotes, and search to see if they have been reported elsewhere.

Likewise, it's easy to take a photo from one event and say it's from another. Images can also be altered for a certain story. Reverse image searches, either through Google or tools like TinEye, can help you find where an image originated.

7. Beware Confirmation Bias

People are often drawn to stories that reinforce the way they see the world and how they feel about certain issues. Fake news is no exception, and many of the articles that fall under its umbrella are designed to stir up emotion in readers and prey on their biases.

It's important to check that news stories are based in fact, rather than sharing them because they support one side of an argument or bolster pre-existing political beliefs.

8. Search If Other News Outlets Are Reporting It

If a story looks suspicious or claims to reveal major news, search to see if other news outlets are also reporting the story. A single article from a suspicious source making a grand claim should be viewed with heavy skepticism. If no reliable news outlets are also reporting the story, then it's very likely fake.

9. Think Before You Share

Fake news sites rely on readers to share and engage with their articles in order for them to spread. In extreme cases, these fake articles can balloon out of control and have unintended consequences for those involved in the stories.

After fake news stories claimed that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children at a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant, the business owner and his employees received death threats and vicious online harassment. The staff is still under attack even though these false claims have been debunked.

More Resources For Spotting Fake News:
Sign up for the HuffPost Must Reads newsletter. Each Sunday, we will bring you the best original reporting, longform writing and breaking news from The Huffington Post and around the web, plus behind-the-scenes looks at how it's all made. Click here to sign up!

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If you've been looking at Facebook lately, you may have seen that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, a town in Texas was quarantined due to a deadly disease and Germany just approved child marriage. To be clear, none of these events really happened ― but that didn't stop news of them from spreading like a virus.

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With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart.

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New York Times: "Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources"

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New York Times: "Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources"

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Update: Please also see our new, 2017 lesson, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News

_________

How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care?

We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct. 6, and try to answer them with resources from The Times as well as from Edutopia, the Center for News Literacy, TEDEd and the NewseumEd.

Although we doubt we need to convince teachers that this skill is important, we like the way Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project frames it in a post for Edutopia.

As he points out, every teacher is familiar with "digital natives" and the way they seem to have been born with the ability to use technology. But what about "digital naïveté" - when students trust sources of information that are obviously unreliable?

Even though they know how easy it is to create and distribute information online, many young people believe - sometimes passionately - the most dubious rumors, tempting hoaxes (including convincingly staged encounters designed to look raw and unplanned) and implausible theories.

Below, a roundup of tools, questions, activities and case studies we hope can help reduce this digital naïveté. Tell us what you think - or what we missed.
Getting Started: What is News Literacy and Why Do You Need It? Video and a related lesson plan from TEDEd.
The concept of " media literacy " has been around for decades, but "news literacy" is a new field that is growing as fast as the boundaries around old definitions of journalism are being dismantled.

The Center for News Literacy explains it this way:

The most profound communications revolution since the invention of Gutenberg's printing press seems to make it harder, not easier, to determine the truth. The digital revolution is characterized by a flood of information and misinformation that news consumers can access from anywhere at any time.

News aggregators, bloggers, pundits, provocateurs, commentators and "citizen journalists" are competing with traditional journalists for public attention. Uninformed opinion masquerades as news. Lines are blurring between legitimate journalism and the propaganda, entertainment, self-promotion and unmediated information on the Internet.

This superabundance of information has made it imperative that citizens learn to judge the reliability of news reports and other sources of information that is passed along their social networks.

Teachers can check out Edutopia's Five-Minute Film Festival on News Literacy to find more resources on the concept, or, to explore it in much greater depth, visit the Center for News Literacy's Digital Resource Center to access a comprehensive curriculum series "From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg in 14 Lessons."

Before you embark on a full unit, however, we suggest two exercises.
First, Ask Your Students to Weigh In

More people have died from selfies than shark attacks this year: //t.co/0IcHpOaWgY pic.twitter.com/1Ij5cG6iMs

- Mashable (@mashable) September 27, 2015

Mashable claims that, in 2015, selfies have killed more people than sharks. The Washington Post's Intersect says that's ridiculous. What do you think?
A couple of years ago, we asked students on our blog, How Do You Know if What You Read Online Is True?

One of our daily Student Opinion questions, it was inspired by a Times article that week, "If a Story Is Viral, Truth May Be Taking a Beating," that noted, "viral trumps verified ... as long as the clicks keep coming."

Here are some of the questions we posed in the course of that discussion. You might invite your own students to talk about them in pairs, small groups or as a whole class before you begin a news literacy curriculum - and then revisit their answers after you finish. And since all of our Student Opinion questions are still open to comment, they can also post their thoughts to our blog:

1. How many viral posts - whether articles, videos or photographs - do you click on each week? How many on average do you share on social media?

2. How often do you check to make sure what you are sharing or commenting on is real? How do you go about finding that out?

3. How much do you care if a story purporting to be real actually is?

4. How much more careful are you with online sources when you are doing work for school than when you are simply surfing the web for fun? How do you decide what is a reliable source for your schoolwork?

5. What sources of news do you usually trust? What sources do you rarely trust? Why?

6. What responsibility do journalists and news outlets who post or link these stories have to make sure they are true? Is it their job to make sure something is not a hoax before they cover or link to it? How do you think they go about verifying information?

7. Can embellished, or outright fake, stories have real-world consequences? What examples can you give?

8. In a world where news can be reported by anyone with a cellphone, how do you decide what is true? What questions should you ask to find out? What personal rules might you develop to decide what news you post and when you post it? What harm might be done by not following those rules?
Then, Impose a 48-Hour News Blackout
Another introductory exercise that can help students examine their media habits and show them why and how news matters comes from the Center for News Literacy, as described in a 2007 Times article about its work:

At the outset of the course, students are required to impose a 48-hour news blackout on themselves. They are not to watch, read or listen to the news, including weather reports and sports scores. The idea is to emphasize the role that such information plays in their lives, often without students' realizing it.

You can find more about that idea here.
Tools and Strategies: How to Tell Fake News From Real News Worst Twerk Fail EVER - Girl Catches Fire Mexican Red Rump Tarantula Missing in Brooklyn Post a Facebook Copyright Status to Protect Your Information
These stories all went viral on social media, but if you click the links, you'll see all of them turned out to be hoaxes. And yet, sometimes something that sounds fake - like this story about West Point cadets who "weaponized" a pillow fight - isn't.

How can you tell? Before you hit "share," what questions should you ask?

First, suggests Chad Lorenz in a piece for Slate that explores the need for news literacy curriculums, consider the places from which you routinely get information:

Today a tour through your social media news feed might take you to Mental Floss, Dadaviz, Colossal, Cracked, Dangerous Minds, Uproxx. How is a reader to know what from this assortment of blogs and webzines can be trusted? What about a site like Inquisitr? ( Approach with caution.) What about Before It's News? (Trick question: That one is definitely not to be trusted.) While it might seem easy to distinguish real news from fake news, many people, including experienced journalists, get suckered more often than you would think. Students, as heavy users of social media, where fake news and hoaxes proliferate, should think about their own responsibility to share reliable information and not perpetuate misinformation.

Once you've done that, you might next consult the Newseum's popular Believe It Or Not? lesson plan that walks teachers and students through basic news literacy. Students learn to ask these six "consumer questions" when vetting a story:

Who made this?

How was this made?

Why was this made?

When was this made?

What is this missing?

Where do I go from here?

Another method for questioning sources of information is the mnemonic the students at Intermediate School 303 in Coney Island use: IMVAIN.

Independent sources are preferable to self-interested sources.

Multiple sources are preferable to a report based on a single source.

Sources who Verify or provide verifiable information are preferable to those who merely assert.

Authoritative and/or Informed sources are preferable to sources who are uninformed or lack authoritative background.

Named sources are better than anonymous ones.

Watch a video and learn more about how they use this technique, from the Center for News Literacy, here, then try it yourself with this checklist.

Finally, here are some guidelines specifically about breaking news from NPR's On The Media:
More Sites and Tools for Fact-Checking What You Read Going Further: Applying Your Skills, Reading Case Studies and More Practice With Content From Your News Feeds
Go through your social media feeds or your daily newspaper or both, and choose one news story, then try asking the six questions the Newseum suggests. (To learn more about how to apply each individual question, consult this resource.)

Or, compare two or more news reports on the same topic but from different news outlets to see how the same story is covered in each. You might compare lead stories or, via the Newseum's daily gallery, compare newspaper front pages from around the world, whether from that day or from big news events of years past. Or, pick a divisive or controversial topic and look at how different news sources have handled the subject.

Remember as you read that news outlets feature both straight news reporting as well as opinion about the news, and that sometimes those distinctions can blur. How can you tell the difference?

If you are a teacher doing this with an entire class, you and your students might eventually create a full classroom gallery walk of news items that highlight some of the issues raised in this post.
Learn From Some Famous Case Studies
So far most of the examples we've provided have been fairly silly - pigs rescuing goats, twerking problems - but there can be serious consequences to inaccurate news reporting, and to contributing to viral stories by sharing them yourself.

And sometimes, even generally reliable sources will make mistakes.

For instance, just after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the F.B.I. released pictures and video of two young men who officials believed may have been responsible for the explosions, and the Internet quickly offered to help find them. Nick Bilton writes about what happened next:

In a scene metaphorically reminiscent of a movie in which vigilantes swarm the streets with pitchforks and lanterns, people took to Reddit, the popular community and social news Web site, and started scouring images posted online from the bombings.

One Reddit forum told users to search for "people carrying black bags," and noted that "if they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images."

In the process, each time a scrap of information was discovered - the color of a hat, the type of straps on a backpack, the weighted droop of a bag - it was passed out on Twitter like "Wanted" posters tacked to lampposts. It didn't matter whether it was right, wrong or even completely made up (some images posted to forums had been manipulated) - off it went, fiction and fact indistinguishable.

Some misinformation online landed on the front page of The New York Post, incorrectly identifying an innocent high school student as a suspect.

Later in the week, the Web wrongly identified one of the suspects as a student from Brown University who went missing earlier this month.

Read Mr. Bilton's article, as well as " The Pressure to Be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand" and " Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear? " to understand the real-life consequences of the race to be first with news.

During Hurricane Sandy, news and images circulated quickly via social media. ( Poynter reported, for instance, that Instagram users were posting 10 Hurricane Sandy pictures every second at one point.)

Reports that the New York Stock Exchange was underwater and that sharks were swimming in front yards in New Jersey spread widely.

This article from The Atlantic, " InstaSnopes: Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes, " explores the stories and photos that circulated, helping readers understand which were real and which weren't.

Why might it be dangerous to rely on social media during a crisis or disaster? What did we learn about social media from Hurricane Sandy?

Finally, you might also consider The Times's Retro Report series, documentaries exploring major news stories of the past and their lasting impact. This one looks at "a moment in 1999 so searing that it is still instantly evoked with a single word: Columbine."

As the related article says, "much of what the public came to believe about Columbine was flat-out wrong. Myths took root from the start, nurtured by frightened and confused students and amplified by news outlets running hard with rumor and conjecture" - and the way the media reports on school shootings today is still affected by those early reports.

To find many more examples of news reporting gone awry, and to consider questions of accuracy and bias in far more depth then this post has room for, we again recommend the Center for News Literacy's 14 lesson series.
News or Satire?
If you spend a lot of time on social media, you've most likely been tricked, or nearly tricked, by taking at face value a story from The Onion or some other satirical news site. In fact, in 2012 the Chinese Communist Party's news outlet may have fallen for an Onion story calling Kim Jong-un, the young, chubby North Korean ruler, the "Sexiest Man Alive for 2012."

Every week in our News Quiz, we save the 10th question for news literacy. Each lists four recent news headlines - three from The Times and one from The Onion - and asks which is which. Though we often feature wacky news as "distractors," these are not trick questions: Close reading should reveal fairly quickly which headline just can't be true.

Try it. Here are two from recent quizzes. You'll notice that not only is the "news" from The Onion improbable, the humor in it is almost always a riff on real news, so keeping up with what's going on in the world in general should make the exercise even easier:
What About The New York Times?
Though most people consider The New York Times, with its reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and ethical reporting guidelines, to be among the most reliable news sources, the paper can still make mistakes - sometimes very important ones.

In 2003, after the Jayson Blair scandal rocked the institution, The Times added more safeguards, including a public editor. This person writes about The Times and its journalism, investigates matters of journalistic integrity and works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper. The position is now held by Margaret Sullivan.

In her column, you can read her take on everything from the paper's coverage of Iraq in 2003 to its current use of anonymous sources and recent dubious reporting on hipster trends like "man buns." Anyone who has a concern about The Times can write to her at public@nytimes.com.
Related Learning Network Resources 50 Ways to Teach With Current Events News and 'News Analysis': Navigating Fact and Opinion in The Times Three Teacher-Tested Ways to Encourage Your Students to Follow Current Events This School Year Skills Practice | Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion Guest Post | Practical Tools for Teaching News Literacy Guest Post | News Literacy Is Not Optional if You Need to Be Well-Informed

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Skills and Strategies | Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources

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Update: Please also see our new, 2017 lesson, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News _________ How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care? We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct.

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The Seattle Times: Fake News Detection Infographic

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The Seattle Times: Fake News Detection Infographic

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Can this infographic help students spot a phony news article? Test it out with your students, kids or friends and let us know in the comments.

Share story

A few weeks ago, we reported on how some Washington educators will be asking the Legislature for money to reform civics education as a way to combat fake news.

Whether that initiative will pass is up in the air. But there's an infographic for teachers (and any news consumer) wondering how to best approach misinformation in the short-term.

A Washington, D.C.-based organization, the News Literacy Project (NLP), has come up with a straightforward guide to help separate fact from conspiracy theory.

"Ten Questions For Fake News Detection" helps teachers and students comb through an article to find telltale signs of falsehood. Use of all caps and excessive punctuation are on the list of potential red flags, according to the graphic.

( Click here to see a PDF version.)

Peter Adams, the senior vice president for educational programs at NLP, said the worksheet was created in late November, when concerned teachers began to ask the organization how to best address fake news in their classrooms.

NLP, founded in 2008, develops resources and products that help educators teach students about smart news consumption, civic freedoms and the newsmaking process.

"Misinformation is being spread in ways it hasn't been," Adams said. And it's taking a toll on students. Around the same time NLP released its infographic, a team of Stanford researchers released a study that revealed widespread inability to verify information among middle-schoolers, high-schoolers and even college students.

Being skeptical is only half the battle when evaluating news sources. The worksheet's first question asks the reader to gauge his or her emotional reaction to an article.

"Confirmation bias is a powerful thing," Adams said. "We like for students to stop and think, 'Hold on: Is this making you angry?'"

For teachers interested in accessing more news-literacy resources, NLP is piloting a virtual platform called Checkology, where teachers and students can access about a dozen different lessons digitally, many of which are taught by journalists in the field. One of the activities on the platform, "Be the Editor," gives students a lesson about news judgment: They're given 20 stories and asked to feature only five of them on a mock website. Other topics explored include social-media algorithms and citizen watchdogs.

Basic membership with Checkology is free with registration. To test-drive premium features, which allows individual activities and assessments for students, teachers can apply for a fee waiver from March 1 until the end of June.
If you decide to try this infographic in your classroom or at home, we'd love to hear about it. Leave us a note in the comments or, if you prefer to reflect on the experience, submit a guest column.

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News you can use: Infographic walks you through 10 questions to detect fake news

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Can this infographic help students spot a phony news article? Test it out with your students, kids or friends and let us know in the comments. Share story A few weeks ago, we reported on how some Washington educators will be asking the Legislature for money to reform civics education as a way to combat fake news.

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The News Literacy Project: 10 Questions for Fake News Detection

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The News Literacy Project: 10 Questions for Fake News Detection

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The problem of fake news came to a dizzying head in 2016 when a man fired a shot in a family pizzeria as he "self-investigated" a false report of a child abuse ring led by top democrats. A BuzzFeed report confirmed that fake news stories, such as the one that claimed Hillary Clinton sold arms to ISIS, were actually viewed more times than articles from established and legitimate news sources. Did fake news have an impact on the election? How do we address the problem from here? This lesson plan features a Channel One News report on the problem. Then, students analyze the problem and consider steps media outlets and individuals need to take to prevent the viral spread of propaganda.

Opening Activity

Warm up: Ask students:

How do you get your news?

If you get it from social media, can you name the news sources where the information you read comes from?

What have you heard about fake news? Why are people concerned about it?

Words in the News: Review this word prior to viewing the video.

propaganda(noun): Information that is often exaggerated or false and spread for the purpose of benefiting or promoting a specific individual or cause.

Heard on the Air: "If we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems."

Watch Video: "Fake News on Facebook"

Discuss

Why did people, particularly the teens in Macedonia, create fake news sites? [to make money]

How are Facebook and Google addressing the problem? [blocking sites from making money off of advertising]

Do you agree with President Obama's assertion that "we have problems" if we cannot tell the difference between real news and propaganda? Why or why not?

Take a Survey

Have students scan their social media newsfeeds to spot suspect articles. Then, have them use this checklist from the News Literacy Project, Ten Questions for Fake News Detection, to determine whether they've spotted an illegitimate news source.

Then, work with the whole class to create a list of sites that they evaluated. List the sites, and create columns for read, "liked," or shared. Perform a class-wide survey to see how many times people read, "liked" or shared an article from each site.

Based on the results of the survey, ask students:

Were you surprised to learn that any of the sites were actually fake news sites?

If you shared any articles from the site, what was the result? Did people like, comment or share the article from your social media page? Did you see this activity on other people's social media pages? What types of behaviors did you notice?

What impact do you think fake news has had on you, or on people in your life?

What impact do you think fake news sites had on the election?

Now that you know these sites are fake, what actions might you take to lessen the harm of misinformation?

Write

What impact do you think fake news had on the 2016 Presidential Election? What steps should the government, media outlets and individuals take to address the problem? Write an essay exploring the issue. Support your answer with evidence from the video, the class survey and your own experience.
Premium subscribers get access to the Channel One News video library, daily show and daily lesson plans.

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The problem of fake news came to a dizzying head in 2016 when a man fired a shot in a family pizzeria as he "self-investigated" a false report of a child abuse ring led by top democrats.

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A man with a rifle who claimed to be "self-investigating" a baseless online conspiracy theory entered the Washington, D.C., pizzeria Comet Ping Pong on Sunday, according to local police.

The man allegedly pointed the gun at a restaurant employee, who managed to escape, then fired the weapon multiple times inside the restaurant. There were no reports of injuries, police say. A North Carolina man has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with the shooting.

It's a disturbing development in what has already been a weeks-long ordeal for Comet Ping Pong, a kid-friendly pizza restaurant that also hosts live music events.

Internet users have developed a wholly fictitious conspiracy theory that maintains Comet Ping Pong is the site of an international Satanic child sex abuse cabal hosted by powerful Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. Speculation and fabrications tied to the bizarre conspiracy theory have been relentlessly circulated by politically motivated fringe sites.

Police say the man told them those conspiracy theories inspired his assault on the restaurant.

Court documents acquired by multiple media outlets say the man was alone inside the restaurant for less than an hour before coming out and surrendering to police. He "stated that he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there," and "surrendered peacefully when he found no evidence that underage children were being harbored in the restaurant," according to the complaint. (You can read it yourself at the New York Times.)

As NPR's Linda Wertheimer put it last week, even the most cursory examination of "#Pizzagate" reveals stories that are "completely and not very skillfully made up."

One of the key pieces of "evidence," for example, comes from the emails WikiLeaks says came from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. The emails include references to pizza. The conspiracy theory holds that based on how frequently pizza comes up, "pizza" must be code for pedophilia.

Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis told NPR that the entire theory is "an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story" that people in the "reality based" community quickly dismissed as an "insane sort of joke."

But on the fringes of the Internet, some people have been taking it seriously. The restaurant has received hundreds of death threats. Now it has had an actual armed assault.

And the "fictitious online conspiracy theory," as D.C. police have called it, shows no sign of going away.

On Sunday night, after the gun was fired inside Comet Ping Pong, Michael Flynn Jr. - the son of incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn - posted messages supporting the conspiracy theory.

"Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it," the younger Flynn tweeted.

He stood by his tweet as the night continued, retweeting people who were accusing the mainstream media of being part of the conspiracy to cover up the pedophilia ring.

In a statement on Sunday, Alefantis vowed that Comet Ping Pong would "continue to operate safely and securely," and he condemned those who are working to spread the malicious accusations.

"What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences," he said. "I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away."

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Man Fires Rifle Inside D.C. Pizzeria, Cites Fictitious Conspiracy Theories

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A man with a rifle who claimed to be "self-investigating" a baseless online conspiracy theory entered the Washington, D.C., pizzeria Comet Ping Pong on Sunday, according to local police. The man allegedly pointed the gun at a restaurant employee, who managed to escape, then fired the weapon multiple times inside the restaurant.

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PBS: "Facebook and others create ways to flag fake news"

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PBS: "Facebook and others create ways to flag fake news"

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Facebook and others create ways to flag fake news | PBS NewsHour Extra

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In response to the issue of fake news articles being shared on their platform, Facebook has launched several new tools to identify and block these sources.

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Media Literacy Now: "Using Fake News to Teach Web Credibility to Middle School Students"

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Media Literacy Now: "Using Fake News to Teach Web Credibility to Middle School Students"

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By Bob Thomas, Education Technology Specialist at Michael Driscoll School, a K-8 school in Brookline, Massachusetts

Fake news has been a topic of great interest in the past few months. Recently, I took advantage of the phenomenon and the native cynicism of middle schoolers to teach web credibility skills. I presented a lesson to seventh graders embarking on a research project in their Language Arts class. Attached here is the presentation with accompanying notes that I used to spark discussion.

Students were engaged and intrigued by examples of fake news and fabricated photos from Hurricane Sandy. They were quick to grasp the power of Google Ads and the lure of quick money earned with provocative links and stories. They provided many examples of "click bait" from their online experiences. Students seemed able to make the connection between the importance of seeking news from reliable news organizations with an editing staff, and the value of seeking information from a reliable research source.

Students were presented with a set of evaluation questions based on guidelines developed by . The questions included:

Who's the author?

Who's the publisher?

Why was the site published?

How accurate is the information?

Is the work presented in a professional manner?

Students were shown a simple tool for citations and seemed to have a new appreciation of citations. (How will readers know that you know what you're talking about?) In a follow up quiz, students were able to distinguish between examples of reliable and questionable research sites.

Questions? Get in touch with Bob at bob_thomas@psbma.org
You can download Bob Thomas's full Powerpoint for use in your own classroom here:

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Using fake news to teach web credibility to middle school students

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By Bob Thomas, Education Technology Specialist at Michael Driscoll School, a K-8 school in Brookline, Massachusetts Fake news has been a topic of great interest in the past few months. Recently, I took advantage of the phenomenon and the native cynicism of middle schoolers to teach web credibility skills.

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EasyBib: Evaluating A News Article Infographic

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EasyBib: Evaluating A News Article Infographic

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Decorah Schools Media Literacy Infographic

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Decorah Schools Media Literacy Infographic

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NPR: "Mark Zuckerberg Addresses Fake News on Facebook"

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NPR: "Mark Zuckerberg Addresses Fake News on Facebook"

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Some have criticized Facebook for being a platform that allowed fake news to spread. Following the criticism, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released plans to combat fake news on the site.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Here's a headline for you - "Pope Francis Shocks The World, Endorses Donald Trump." That was the most shared story on Facebook during this election season according to a BuzzFeed investigation. Just one problem, it's completely fake, made-up, not true. And fake election stories like that were all over the internet. That's led to a lot of soul-searching for internet giants like Facebook. On Friday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about ways the company might correct that problem while still allowing users to post whatever they want. To learn more, we turned to NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Hi, David.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Linda.

WERTHEIMER: So how big was the problem of fake news in this election season, do you think? I mean, how important was it?

FOLKENFLIK: We don't exactly know. People from President Obama on down certainly have cited it as part of the - a melange of misinformation. Journalists, I think, increasingly were concerned about the sloshing of news stories that they had to in some ways counter as they spoke to people on the campaign trail out in various states, realizing that people's sources of information were no longer simply on TV, on the air, online and in print, but that they were awash in sources that were essentially designed to mislead them. You know, if we're in a world of ever-expanding media options, it's a tough thing to know how people are going to make good choices.

WERTHEIMER: Well, Mark Zuckerberg seems to want it both ways. He hopes for more correct content, he says, but Facebook should not be arbiters of content, and people should still put anything they want to on Facebook.

FOLKENFLIK: Well, until recently, I think he took an extremely disingenuous stance, which was that he said that Facebook was a platform but not a publisher. And if you think about Facebook's astonishing reach, you've got to salute their insights but also say, OK, with that, incredible audience comes responsibility. And so, you know, I don't think he gets to duck responsibility.

At the moment, he's saying hey, you know, we're going to change our algorithms, we're going to figure out ways to flag things more readily, we're going to go with outside outfits that fact-check stories, perhaps like Snopes or PolitiFact or others, and also to strip out the economic incentive for companies that have popped up to do so. That is that there's a revenue-sharing program for content that proves to be viral. And Google and Facebook have, this week, said they're going to push a fake news sites out of that program. They don't want to reward them for what they're doing.

WERTHEIMER: But still, there does seem to be an appetite for fake news. I mean, you would think that people would be more discriminating, that they would understand when they read this that it couldn't possibly be true.

FOLKENFLIK: I think when they see it online or on Facebook they say it's on Facebook, good enough for me. That is the validation. I don't think people are being as discriminating as they should in saying consider the sources they once did. I think they're saying, well, Facebook, in some ways, provides a patina of validation and affirmation. And Zuckerberg only this week appears to have embraced that.

WERTHEIMER: Where does that leave us?

FOLKENFLIK: You know, the sad truth is I think that this leaves us with the responsibility not just to be consumers but to be citizens. You have to think hard about where you're getting news from. You have to see if they're doing their homework in public, that is if they show you how they reach the conclusions that they're reporting, if they create links to the original interviews or documents that they're basing these stories on and not simply whipping these up out of whole cloth. If you've never heard of a site, I think it matters in terms of your appreciation of whether or not to trust it. I think we need to be a lot more muscular as we consume information. Yes, it's on the Internet, but no, that doesn't mean it's true.

WERTHEIMER: NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, thank you.

FOLKENFLIK: You bet.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

Facebook could start labeling stories that might be false, company founder Mark Zuckerberg says, laying out options for how the site handles what he calls "misinformation." Other ideas include automatic detection of potentially false stories and easier flagging by users.

"While the percentage of misinformation is relatively small, we have much more work ahead on our roadmap," Zuckerberg wrote in a posting to his Facebook profile last night.

Zuckerberg outlined seven projects his company is working on that could undermine fake news stories. The approaches range from consulting with journalists and fact-checking organizations to disrupting the flow of money in the often-lucrative online fake news business.

"We are raising the bar for stories that appear in related articles under links in News Feed," Zuckerberg wrote of one initiative. Of another, he said, "A lot of misinformation is driven by financially motivated spam. We're looking into disrupting the economics with ads policies like the one we announced earlier this week, and better ad farm detection."

The idea of using software to classify misinformation is sure to generate discussion. Zuckerberg says it would bring "better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves." He didn't specify what the effects of that determination might be - whether it would mean the removal of the content from certain news feeds or from the site altogether.

Several of the highest-rated comments on Zuckerberg's post were positive, with this idea from George Papa ranking near the top: "If people had a bit of brain and did some research on their own when they read something that does not sound right...we would not have this problem."

Together, the projects signal another step in Facebook's evolution from its start as a tech-oriented company to its current status as a complex media platform. The company has come under criticism that its news feeds and ad payment systems are too welcoming of fake news, particularly after a contentious presidential campaign season that culminated in last week's upset win by Donald Trump.

Trump's Nov. 8 election left many pollsters and pundits mystified. It also prompted social media users to complain that Facebook and other sites had kept people in bubbles of like-minded opinion; some also said that fake news had influenced the vote.

Days after the election, Zuckerberg sought to allay those complaints, saying that fake news makes up a "very small volume" of the content on Facebook, as NPR's Aarti Shahani reported. And he said hoaxes existed long before his site went online.

"There's a profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could have voted the way that they did is because they saw some fake news," Zuckerberg said last week.

As Aarti reported Thursday, Facebook has long relied on users to flag suspicious or offensive stories - and it relies on subcontractors in the Philippines, Poland, and elsewhere to make quick yes-no rulings on those cases, often within 10 seconds.

With last night's announcement, Zuckerberg gave a glimpse of how Facebook is wading into an area that's often fraught with controversy: verifying or censoring content.

"The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously," he wrote. "Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information."

Here's the list of steps Zuckerberg laid out (here we're quoting his post):

"- Stronger detection. The most important thing we can do is improve our ability to classify misinformation. This means better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.

"- Easy reporting. Making it much easier for people to report stories as fake will help us catch more misinformation faster.

"- Third party verification. There are many respected fact checking organizations and, while we have reached out to some, we plan to learn from many more.

"- Warnings. We are exploring labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties or our community, and showing warnings when people read or share them.

"- Related articles quality. We are raising the bar for stories that appear in related articles under links in News Feed.

"- Disrupting fake news economics. A lot of misinformation is driven by financially motivated spam. We're looking into disrupting the economics with ads policies like the one we announced earlier this week, and better ad farm detection.

"- Listening. We will continue to work with journalists and others in the news industry to get their input, in particular, to better understand their fact checking systems and learn from them."

Several items on the list hint at how daunting the task of silencing fake news may be.

Exclusive breaking news stories, for instance, could have trouble getting the green light from either an algorithm or an independent fact-checker; and both the reporting and warning features could become new tools in advocates' fights to push their own views - and reinforce the bubbles that have prompted Facebook users' complaints.

Zuckerberg has spoken about the difficulty of bursting those bubbles in the past. As Aarti reported last week, "The problem, he says, is that people don't click on things that don't conform to their worldview. And, he says, 'I don't know what to do about that.' "

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Mark Zuckerberg Addresses Fake News On Facebook

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Some have criticized Facebook for being a platform that allowed fake news to spread. Following the criticism, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released plans to combat fake news on the site. LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: Here's a headline for you - "Pope Francis Shocks The World, Endorses Donald Trump."

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NPR Ed: "5 Ways Teachers Are Fighting Fake News"

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NPR Ed: "5 Ways Teachers Are Fighting Fake News"

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As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom.

Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can't determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum. The study showed that while students absorb media constantly, they often lack the critical thinking skills needed to tell fake news from the real stuff.

Teachers are taking up the challenge to change that. NPR Ed put out a social media call asking how educators are teaching fake news and media literacy, and we got a lot of responses. Here's a sampling from around the country:
Fake news "Simon Says"
In Scott Bedley's version of Simon Says, it's not those two magic words that keep you in the game, but deciding correctly whether a news story is real or not.

To start off the game, Bedley sends his fifth-graders at Plaza Vista School in Irvine, Calif., an article to read on their laptops. He gives them about three minutes to make their decision - they have to read the story carefully, examine its source and use their judgment. Those who think the article is false, stand up. The "true" believers stay in their seats.

Bedley says he's been trying to teach his students for a while to look carefully at what they're reading and where it comes from. He's got a seven-point checklist his students can follow:

1. Do you know who the source is, or was it created by a common or well-known source? Example National Geographic, Discovery, etc.
2. How does it compare to what you already know?
3. Does the information make sense? Do you understand the information?
4. Can you verify that the information agrees with three or more other sources that are also reliable?
5. Have experts in the field been connected to it or authored the information?
6. How current is the information?
7. Does it have a copyright?
Subtle changes
Bedley also teamed up recently with Todd Flory at Wheatland Elementary School in Wichita, Kan., to do a fake news challenge via Skype. Flory's fourth-graders chose two real articles and wrote a fake article of their own. Then, they presented them to Bedley's class in California.

The fifth-graders had four minutes to do some extra research based on the presentations, and then they decided which article out of the three were fake. Most importantly, they had to explain why they thought it was fake. Otherwise, no points.

Flory says writing the fake news article was more difficult for his students than they expected because they had to make it believable.

"It really hammered home the idea to them that fake news doesn't have to be too sensational," he says. "It can be a very subtle change, but that subtle change can have big consequences."

Every Friday, Flory's class participates in what he calls Genius Hour. His students propose a question to answer through online research. But before they took to the Internet, Flory had to walk his students through the steps: What are reliable and trusted websites? How do you effectively search on the Internet and verify information?

He uses Skype to connect his students with researchers and scientists from all over the world. He calls this "authentic research."

"It's so much more powerful for them to do some of this authentic research when they're able to hear from a scientist who's seeing firsthand the effects of climate change," Flory says. This year's class got to talk to a penguin scientist.

Flory says he's not only teaching his students effective media literacy skills; he is also helping them to be better citizens through global engagement and interaction.
Let them eat fake (news)
Remember Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake" - her famous line about the poor that got her in all that trouble?

Thing is, it never happened. Fake news!

For Diane Morey and her ninth-graders at Danvers High School in Danvers, Mass., that's a teachable moment.

"The media of the day didn't have Facebook, Twitter or partisan websites," Morey says. "But they did have pamphlets."

She shows her class cartoons and pamphlets from the French Revolutionary period that criticized Antoinette, and then discusses the conclusions that were made from those sources. She also includes a primary source: a letter written by Antoinette.

Morey says history is rich with examples of fake news, and since source analysis is the core of her lesson plans, she doesn't need a textbook.

"We don't study [history] to memorize Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI," she explains. "We're studying this because we can see this happening in the current-day political climate."

Morey encourages students to bring in examples of articles from today's news that don't ring true.

"Once you expose it to them," she says, "it's like a game for them, seeing, 'Hey, I'm not sure I can trust this.' "
Extra layers
For 13 years, Larry Ferlazzo has been teaching kids who are learning English how to read and write. Now, he's adding another layer: helping them figure out if what they're reading is true.

Ferlazzo teaches at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. He's also a blogger and journalist.

Last month, he wrote a lesson plan on addressing fake news to English language learners (ELLs), which was published in The New York Times.

He says media literacy is especially important for ELLs for two reasons. First, they're not fluent in the language they're reading, adding an extra level of difficulty in deciding what to believe. On top of that, false or exaggerated news about immigration could have a major impact on their lives.

His lesson starts off with a few examples of reliable and fake news. Then, some basic journalism stuff: Students identify the different parts of the news, from the "lede" to quotations. They enter all that into a diagram on paper so they have a visual representation of what they're reading.

That diagram eventually becomes a guide for students to write their own fake news lede that they can share with other classmates or post on a class blog.
Media consumers and contributors
In 2015, Spencer Brayton and his colleague Natasha Casey revamped a media literacy course for students at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Ill. Brayton says the key is the critical approach.

"Students come in expecting that we're going to lecture," Brayton explains. "But we have them think about certain power structures in how information is produced and how it reaches them. If they're going to understand how they're going to take it in, then they have to know how the news is going to be produced."

To take the class, students need a Twitter account. From the very first week, they are asked to follow five to 10 accounts on Twitter that promote media and information literacy, like Media Literacy Now or Renee Hobbs.

As they follow these posts and add additional ones, the goal is that they'll start to recognize fake news and other biases or viewpoints in media.

By the end of the course, Brayton says students begin to see themselves not only as creators of information, but as credible sources of information too.

The Twitter assignments encourage his students to engage with social media - retweeting, following and commenting - which Brayton says helps his students see how they play a role in spreading information to other media consumers. That means they have to take what they share more seriously.

"In looking at this issue, people seem to want a quick solution to fake news, but I'm not sure there is a solution (at least an easy one)," Brayton writes in an email. "Students need to recognize that these skills and ideas need to stay with them through adulthood, but that's easier said than done - we all fall into this trap."

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As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom. Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can't determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum.

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NEA Today: "Who Stands Between Fake News & Students? Educators"

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NEA Today: "Who Stands Between Fake News & Students? Educators"

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Every week, Dave Stuart hands out a current news article to his world history students so they can digest and evaluate the credibility of the information and its sources. One day this fall, Stuart, now in his tenth year at Cedar Springs High School in Michigan, distributed a couple of stories about the 2016 presidential candidates.

In the middle of a uniquely controversial and divisive campaign, it was perhaps inevitable that during the discussion some students would dredge up information that didn't appear in the articles their teacher had provided. It was quickly apparent, says Stuart, that much of it was untrue and probably gleaned from dubious sources - or peddlers of what has now been famously dubbed "fake news."

There's nothing new about teenagers (or adults for that matter) finding unreliable or just plain false information on the Internet, but fake news - bogus or exaggerated information disguised as reliable "journalism" and funneled primarily through Facebook - went viral in a big way in 2016. An analysis by Buzzfeed revealed that from August to November, the height of the presidential campaign, the level of engagement (likes, shares, etc.) for posts categorized as "fake news" outpaced that of stories from mainstream news outlets.

Because it was generated by the hyperpartisan climate of the 2016 election, addressing fake news in the classroom specifically c ould be dicey for educators if it is perceived that the purpose is to knock down or dismiss political opinions and candidates.

The conversation in Dave Stuart's class, however, was focused more on larger questions of how students as news consumers reach conclusions and how they can and should use evidence to support these conclusions.

"I don't think my students are intentionally looking for conspiracy web sites or blatantly misleading information," Stuart explains. "So I would just redirect the discussion to questions about credibility without passing judgement. Is this source valid? Where is the evidence? The conversations were respectful and the kids handled it really well. Let them do the thinking."

When Information Becomes Polluted

Taking on "fake news" still comes down to media and digital literacy, which is taught in many schools but certainly not at the level needed to help neutralize the effects of false information that went viral. Writing on his blog, Bill Ferriter, a teacher in North Carolina, believes focusing on the "new literacy" in the classroom will do more to curb the problem than waiting on Mark Zuckerberg to overhaul Facebook's fact-checking procedures:
"We don't need new policies and tools from tech companies to identify sketchy content on the web. Instead we need to develop citizens who take careful steps to verify that the information they are reading anywhere on the web is reliable. That's the new literacy in today's complicated media ecology - and it is the new literacy that we give too little attention to in schools."
Schools are preparing a generation of bubble children without the immunities to deal with the information toxins that surround them. Quality information is to a thriving democracy what clean air and clear water are to public health" - Prof. Sam Wineburg, Stanford University

Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire, created its media literacy program in 1997 at the advent of the Internet and the looming explosion of digital content. The program took the subject off the sidelines and developed a required year-long course for 11th graders. While the recent election may have pushed fake news into the spotlight, and the program has evolved over the years to focus more on digital media, Concord High teachers haven't lost sight of the core mission.

"We didn't create the course twenty years ago to convince our students to believe what we believe is right," explains Kaileen Chilauskas, chair of the school's English department. "We created it so that students have the skills necessary to be confident and in control of their own beliefs, given the media saturated world they live in. We want them to be knowledgeable consumers, ones who are in control of the millions of messages they receive every day."

Concord High's nationally-recognized work in this area won't be found in many other states. Most schools, according to Professor Sam Wineburg of the Stanford Graduate School of Education and founder of the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), tend to "respond like ostriches." If they don't ban the Internet altogether, they filter it beyond recognition.

"Schools are preparing a generation of bubble children without the immunities to deal with the information toxins that surround them," he adds. "Quality information is to a thriving democracy what clean air and clear water are to public health. When information becomes polluted, our civic discourse is compromised."

Needed: Students as Fact-Checkers

Long before the expression "fake news" entered the public consciousness, Wineburg and his colleagues at Stanford were already immersed in an 18-month-long study to evaluate students' ability to accurately evaluate online information.

The results, says Wineburg, were bleak.

"Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite to be true."

In total, the researchers collected and analyzed 7,804 student responses in 12 states. They tested students in low-income and affluent middle and high schools, as well as college students at six universities.

Regardless of their age or socioeconomic status, students across-the-board demonstrated a troubling inability to weed out unreliable information.

For example, the overwhelming majority of middle schoolers believed "sponsored content" was a legitimate news story and were unable to discern native ads from actual articles. When shown an image and caption that went viral on social media, high school students readily accepted the claim presented in the caption without offering any reservations about verification or attribution.

Most college students didn't take note of any potential bias in a tweet by an political activist group, and when it came to identifying a reliable news source from an obvious fringe outlet, most students couldn't tell any difference.

While unsettling to say the least, the findings are unsurprising in many ways, because, as the researchers point out, schools haven't really helped students think otherwise and help them become the fact-checkers they need to be.

Wineburg says the next steps to this research include developing curriculum to help educators track student understanding of online information and to adjust their instruction accordingly. The Stanford History Education Group has already begun to pilot lesson plans in high schools in California and a video exploring the link between digital literacy and civic, informed discourse may soon also be on the way.

What's important for educators to remember, says Dave Stuart, is that students' familiarity with digital technologies has no bearing on the fact that they need help in competently digesting information and reaching well-founded conclusions.

"Kids still need to read, write, think and speak critically. That doesn't come with being a digital native. Not at all."

And instilling these skills, Stuart adds, should be a responsibility of all educators across the curriculum.

"A student's ability to be more critical of the information they get online, to understand evidence, to identify inaccurate sources, affects practically every subject - English, Social Studies, Science, Health. This is a huge opportunity for all of us."

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Who Stands Between Fake News and Students? Educators

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Every week, Dave Stuart hands out a current news article to his world history students so they can digest and evaluate the credibility of the information and its sources. One day this fall, Stuart, now in his tenth year at Cedar Springs High School in Michigan, distributed a couple of stories about the 2016 presidential candidates.

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Stanford History Education Group Study ("Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning")

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Stanford History Education Group Study ("Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning")

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Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning

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Over the last year and a half, the Stanford History Education Group has prototyped, field tested, and validated a bank of assessments that tap civic online reasoning-the ability to judge the credi...

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