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All the Media Literacy lessons & resources I used this year

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All the Media Literacy lessons & resources I used this year

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Tons of tools, tips, and techniques for teaching staff and students critical News, Media, and Information Literacy skills.

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YouTube Algorithms: How To Avoid the Rabbit Hole

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Co-produced with Data & Society Research Institute @datasociety Special thanks to danah boyd, Data & Society Founder and President and Safiya Noble, author of "Algorithms of Oppression."

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News & Media Literacy Toolkit- Common Sense Education

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News & Media Literacy Toolkit- Common Sense Education

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Play the fake news game! How bad are you? Become a fake news tycoon and get as many followers as you can.

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If you're discussing this anywhere, one of my students made this video. (Probably the best student created work I've ever had turned in over my career.)

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https://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/digital-issues/authenticating-information/reality-check

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MediaSmarts - K to 12 Digital Literacy Curriculum 

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MediaSmarts - K to 12 Digital Literacy Curriculum 

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https://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources/use-understand-create-digital-literacy-framework-canadian-schools

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In this section, teachers can access digital media literacy classroom resources aligned with curriculum outcomes set out by their province or territory. Also included is a comprehensive study of the current state of digital literacy education in Canada.

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USE, UNDERSTAND & ENGAGE: A Digital Media Literacy Framework for Canadian Schools

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In this section, teachers can access digital media literacy classroom resources aligned with curriculum outcomes set out by their province or territory. Also included is a comprehensive study of the current state of digital literacy education in Canada.

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https://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources/digital-literacy-101

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While MediaSmarts’ research shows that teachers place considerable importance on teaching their students digital literacy skills such as authenticating information, managing privacy, addressing cyberbullying, and being safe online, evidence suggests this is not reflected in Canadian classrooms. The intent of these resources is to support teachers in implementing digital literacy into their teaching practice and to help them to develop digital literacy lessons and activities that suit their students’ needs.

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https://mediasmarts.ca/media-literacy-101

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Media educators base their teaching on key concepts of media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. These key concepts act as filters that any media text has to go through in order for us to respond.

To help teachers introduce these to elementary students, MediaSmarts has partnered with Companies Committed to Kids (formerly Concerned Children's Advertisers) to develop a suite of videos on each of the key concepts. Each video is accompanied by a lesson plan that reiterates the main ideas from the videos and helps students expand and apply what they've learned.

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Media educators base their teaching on key concepts of media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. These key concepts act as filters that any media text has to go through in order for us to respond.

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In this section, you can find...

In this section, you can use our search tool to help you find lesson plans, tip sheets and other resources on various media topics. For instructions on how to use our search tool, click here.

How to Support Us

Interested in supporting MediaSmarts? Find out how you can get involved.

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In this section, you can use our search tool to help you find lesson plans, tip sheets and other resources on various media topics. For instructions on how to use our search tool, click here. Interested in supporting MediaSmarts? Find out how you can get involved. Charitable Registration No.

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By becoming a PBS Certified Media Literacy Educator you demonstrate your expertise in teaching students to produce media that matters and to think critically about their role as media consumers and creators.

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Does anyone have a good visualization of media sources and their place on the political spectrum?

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Does anyone have a good visualization of media sources and their place on the political spectrum?

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My Pinterest page of Media Literacy goodies:

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My Pinterest page of Media Literacy goodies:

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Above the Noise , a YouTube series for teens, cuts through the hype and dives deep into the research behind the issues affecting their daily lives. The series investigates controversial subject matter to help young viewers draw their own informed conclusions while inspiring media literacy and civic engagement. FOR EDUCATORS: Join us on PBS Learning Media where you'll find standards-aligned free lesson plans, viewing guides, transcripts, and more for each episode. Learn more about ourpartnerships and funders.

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Above the Noise , a YouTube series for teens, cuts through the hype and dives deep into the research behind the issues affecting their daily lives. The series investigates controversial subject matter to help young viewers draw their own informed conclusions while inspiring media literacy and civic engagement.

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kqed "above the noise" "myles bess" "shirin ghaffary" "media literacy" science "current events" explainer ngss "common core" news journalism research above the noise pbs education youth teens media investigate evidence student high school

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ABOVE THE NOISE is a show that cuts through the hype and takes a deeper look at the research and facts behind controversial and trending topics in the news. ...

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PBS LearningMedia Resources That Support MLE Certification

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From Milton

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APF Fact Check has a list of their processes:  

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APF Fact Check has a list of their processes:  

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As well as traditional journalism skills, we use a number of simple tools for verifying online information, some common sense and a lot of caution.

We aim to transparently show the steps we take throughout the debunking process.

Starting out with a specific question, we seek to investigate and report dubious stories and claims that may or may not end up on our newswires.

Our editors start by trying to contact the person behind a claim, as well as checking with our own archives and journalists.

We seek non-partisan, publicly available information in our investigations, and link to it online.
Returning to the source
A great deal false information involves old images taken out of context.

We start with a reverse image search, inserting the picture in one or several search engines to see if it has previously appeared online.

A right click on a picture on the Google Chrome browser gives the option "search Google for image". The search engine will trawl its database to see if there are similar images in its index.

We like the RevEye browser extension which gives a choice of image search engines Google, Bing (Microsoft), Yandex (Russian) , TinEye (By images, not keywords) and Baidu (Chinese).

Reverse search does not always give results, either because an image has never been published on the internet, or because it has not yet been indexed.

We also observe visual clues (such as shop signs, street signs, architecture, vegetation, license plates) to find the location or date of an image.

As part of an investigation of a video shot in Crete, we found the location via Google Maps, after observing the shape of a beach.

Images or videos alone are never proof of a statement. We also need to check the coherence of an image with information such as the date it was published and details within it, such as weather conditions.

When dealing with suspect images, we try our best to obtain the original files to determine if they have been altered.
Searching for the origin of a statement or quotation:
A simple copy and paste of a paragraph of text in a search engine can often find if it has already circulated online.

Quotes related to politicians are often taken from parody websites. A copy and paste in a search engine can trace back to the source in seconds.

If a comment is attributed to a person, we seek a reliable source (audio or video recording, official transcript), as well as looking at the person's online accounts for further verification. We will also contact the person directly to seek to prove their statement.

We use Whopostedwhat.com to search for posts on Facebook containing a specific keyword or from a particular date.

When dealing with quantitive data, we look for the original study and its methodology.
Investigating videos
We use the INVID Chrome extension, co-developed by AFP, on a daily basis. The tool allows us to cut a video into thumbnails (via the "Keyframes" tab). It then carries out several reverse searches on the same images.
Cross-checking information
If an image or information circulating on the internet appears doubtful - especially if it does not cite a source - one of our first reflexes is to study the comments. Some might provide contradictory information or raise questions about the truth of a post.

If a person or organization is mentionned, we contact them for their version of events.

If a questionable publication is based on a picture or video, we will search for other images from the same event to compare them with. We also seek to contact the author of the image and, where possible, locate and cite them.
Contacting the right sources
We regularly deal with topics on which we have little previous knowledge. In these cases, we collaborate with AFP journalists with expertise in a specific subject, region or language. We work closely with AFP's worldwide fact-checking team.
Not just the internet
For some fact-checks, the internet and telephone are not enough. Sometimes - as in all journalism - you need to be in the field.

In July 2018, we asked an AFP journalist in Kuwait to check a video that had gone viral. Many publications claimed the video showed a Saudi man assaulting a receptionist in a London hospital.

But early online research put us on a different track: the assault allegedly took place in a veterinary clinic in Kuwait City.

Our journalist visited the clinic we had identified on the internet and confirmed it was the same place, as well as obtaining a testimony from the vet attacked in the video. Here is that fact-check.

A senior editor reviews each report before it is published online.

We use archive tools, such as Wayback Machine, to avoid increasing clicks on false information and to keep a record in case a post later changes or vanishes.

Corrections policy: If we make a factual error we will correct it and note it on the original item. This will be clearly marked as "CORRECTION" at the bottom of the article, with the date of the modification and an explanation. If the mistake is significant we will take down a story and leave an explanation. Here is a link to all corrections.

For clarifications or updates, we will use the "EDIT" mention at the bottom of a story.

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We aim to transparently show the steps we take throughout the debunking process. Starting out with a specific question, we seek to investigate and report dubious stories and claims that may or may not end up on our newswires. Our editors start by trying to contact the person behind a claim, as well as checking with our own archives and journalists.

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Great lesson I've used with my 11th grade students featuring the "Lunch Date" video.  It reminds me of the Goldilocks exercise we did this morning.

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How do biases and stereotypes influence the way we interpret the world around us?

How can both journalists and media consumers address issues of bias in themselves and others?

Students will be able to understand the standards of quality journalism that are designed to minimize the influence of individual and group biases.

Students will be able to recognize how biases affect the way people perceive the world around them, including the information they encounter.

Students will be able to identify some of the challenges of dispassionate, "objective" reporting.

Bias can have a significant influence on the way we as individuals and as a community respond to troubling events that are complicated by the racial identities of the people involved. Recognizing and seeking to limit the power and inevitability of human bias is not only an indispensable component of producing quality journalism, it is also a critical skill for consumers and sharers of news and information. This lesson begins with students experiencing firsthand the challenges of producing neutral reporting by writing a "straight news" account based on a short video. This activity is followed by a video of journalists talking about their strategies for minimizing the influence of bias in their work.

When discussing the video "How Journalists Minimize Bias" with students, in Activity 2, it is useful to keep the following three points in mind:

All information is not created equal. Just because absolute neutrality or objectivity is impossible to achieve does not mean that all information is equally flawed and biased. While it can be problematic to endorse one source of credible information over another for students, it is essential that we help them develop the ability to make these determinations in a thoughtful manner for themselves.

Perceptions of bias are, themselves, highly subjective. Due to confirmation bias, people commonly perceive opposing biases in the same piece of information. For example, the same image or news report might prompt accusations of bias from a range of positions on the political spectrum. (We will explore one such example later in the unit.)

Be wary of cynicism and assumptions about the motives of journalists. Conversations about media bias often devolve into an exchange of cynical assumptions about "the media." These assumptions frequently include the notion that media bias is almost always overt and systematic (to advance a specific agenda) rather than perceived and incidental. While the journalistic standard of neutrality or "objectivity" is almost certainly impossible to perfectly achieve in any given news report (and impossible for any of us, with our biases, to identify as objective even if it were possible), bias can be minimized through journalistic standards and practices such as those described in the video.

1. Try Your Hand at Reporting
In this exercise, students will step into a journalist's shoes and try to write a neutral report of an incident featured in the short film "The Lunch Date". (Note: Make sure to stop the film at the 7:23 mark, when the white woman is walking to her train.)

Tell students that they are going to act as journalists and write a straight news report based on the film they are about to see. The primary purpose of "straight news" is to inform the audience without seeking to persuade. It should include all relevant facts, context, and information available at the time. Straight news should give the reader enough information and relevant points of view to make up his or her own mind about the topic or issue.

Tell students to record their observations in their journals or notebooks as they watch. You may want to first brainstorm the kinds of information and details students should aim to record.

Play the video. Stop the video at 7:23 and ask students to use their notes to write a two- to three-paragraph straight news report describing what happened in as much detail as possible. When they are finished, students should give the piece a headline that they feel captures the essence of the events they observed. The goal of the writing is not to create a polished piece but to attempt a fair and accurate description of the observed events.

When students have finished writing, have them work in pairs or small groups to share their accounts. Have the groups consider these questions: What is similar in each account? What is different? What facts were used to back up each account? Which statements or observations reflect opinions or generalizations? Provide students with the F.O.G. Analysis graphic organizer and ask them to identify and record the Facts, Opinions, and Generalizations in their news reports.

Reconvene as a class. Discuss these questions: What do we know (or think we know) about the events-and how do we know this? What assumptions did we make? Can we identify any examples of where confirmation bias may have been at play?

Play the final few minutes of the video before the credits.

Did the film end as students expected? Why or why not? Do they want to revise their earlier reports and their F.O.G. analyses? How would they change their reports? How did their reports speak to the issue of confirmation bias?

How might the woman's biases and stereotypes have influenced the way she responded to the various African American men she encountered throughout the film?

How did the African American man in the restaurant respond to the woman's mistake? Why would the director give the man that reaction? Why do you think the woman laughs? What do the final minutes suggest about the power of stereotypes?

What do students think this activity reveals about the challenge of overcoming confirmation bias as we consume news and information? What other challenges does it reveal? (Much of this will be further explored in later lessons.)

2. Learn How Journalists Counteract Bias
In the previous lesson, we explored a range of biases, including implicit, explicit, and confirmation bias. Journalists generally understand that they need to work to minimize the impact of bias on their reporting. Screen the video "How Journalists Minimize Bias", which features editors and reporters talking about how bias affects the work they do. (You may want to distribute the transcript for reference and note taking.)

As students watch, ask them to make note of journalists' and editors' opinions about how bias affects their work and the different strategies they use to counteract bias.

After the video, ask students what they heard. How did the anecdotes shared by the journalists connect to things students already knew? How did the video challenge or extend their thinking? What did they notice about the ways the journalists talked about bias? What strategies did the journalists use in their efforts to be neutral and fair in their reporting? What, if any, strategies would students suggest that were not mentioned?

3. Review the Unit To Date

As a wrap-up for the first four lessons, and before we dive into the "information aftermath" of Ferguson in depth, review what has been covered so far, including:

how identity influences the way we respond to individuals, issues, and events;

how confirmation and other biases cause us to cling to our beliefs in the face of information that refutes them; and

how journalists and news organizations strive to combat bias in their reporting.

Emphasize three key points that affect how we process information:

Most people have a tendency to seek evidence that affirms their existing ideas and beliefs and to avoid or ignore information that contradicts them-particularly ideas and beliefs to which they have a strong emotional connection.

When our focus and attention are limited, we miss important things.

We are all susceptible to "reasoning in reverse"-in other words, we use our rational minds to come up with as much evidence as possible that confirms our existing emotions, ideas, and beliefs about a given subject.

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How do biases and stereotypes influence the way we interpret the world around us? How can both journalists and media consumers address issues of bias in themselves and others? Students will be able to understand the standards of quality journalism that are designed to minimize the influence of individual and group biases.

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This is an older TED Talk but I LOVE how he explains all the ways they verify viral clips: 

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This is an older TED Talk but I LOVE how he explains all the ways they verify viral clips: 

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How to separate fact and fiction online | Markham Nolan

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How do we get students to CARE about the news? I struggle with this.

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How do we get students to CARE about the news? I struggle with this.

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TinEye is an image search and recognition company. We are experts in computer vision, pattern recognition, neural networks, and machine learning.

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Created this so my students can interact with headlines.

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LibGuides: NEWS SOURCES & TODAY'S HEADLINES: TODAY'S HEADLINES

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LibGuides: NEWS SOURCES & TODAY'S HEADLINES: TODAY'S HEADLINES

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Check is a tool used by international journalists to confirm stories in real-time.

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Verify digital media consistently and openly for your team and your readers.

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I presented a TEDx talk about news literacy. Here’s the video.

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Whoa! Wait. What? | Erin Gibson | TEDxEvansville

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EducaMidia is a media literacy program in Brazil and we have developed a set of media literacy cards. The cards contain definitions and discussion prompts related to journalism, social media, advertising and media production, and are meant to provoke reflection on our role as media consumers and producers. Usually we do a brief presentation on information pollution, and then break out the audience in groups that will be given a card each to discuss. At the end, each group will present their thoughts. Feel free to reach out at marianaochs@palavraaberta.org.br

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I'm writing a book which covers fake news as well as privacy, security, the influence of profit, and the old Institute for Propaganda Analysis insight that understanding your own receptiveness to propaganda is important to not falling for it.

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I'm writing a guide to surviving - and even thriving - in a time of technological revolution. This book will help you and your family: * cultivate your digital security "victory garden" like the vegetable gardens our forebears grew during the World Wars * understand how we got "fake news" and how to spot it * develop digital mindfulness techniques to reduce stress * identify who knows what about you online - and why it matters.

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No need to print.

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Connecting Current Events to To Kill a Mockingbird.

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The November 2018 School Library Journal (SLJ) featured the article"Digital Curation of Classics: Instagram project helps students find relevance in
UPDATED 1/31/19
To Kill a Mockingbird" by Amanda Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence details a project she collaborated on with the freshman English teacher and piloted with ninth grade students. The project was designed to answer the age old questions "Why do I have to read this?"

Ms. Lawrence granted me permission to discuss the article and share the resources I created for my students. Her response "Teamwork makes the dream work!" (I love my professional community!!)

While you can read more about the project in the SLJ article, briefly, Lawrence and her colleague asked students to create a thematic photo journal. The students selected a theme from To Kill a Mockingbird and connectedLee's work to present day. The students learned to use databases to explore and understand current events and to locate a present day primary source image. (I used this opportunity to talk about "fauxtography"). Students used Instagram as a platform to practice digital communication and curation and allowed for a much broader audience than a simple teacher grade.

You can access the resources I created for this project below. THANK YOU Amanda for sharing this awesome idea and being a great teammate!!

We were surprised at how little students knew about current events. When we realized that we changed up our project a bit, by bringing in Time, The Week and The New York Times Upfront magazines. We discussed TKAM themes and we asked students to look for evidence related to these themes in the magazine articles. We let the browse for about 20 minutes and had them choose the news event FIRST and then find a primary source image to represent.

We also learned that there was no way we were going to be able to utilize Instagram with student accounts so we are currently working on another way to publish student work...stay tuned!

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To Kill a Mockingbird Digital Curation Inspired by Amanda Lawrence

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The November 2018 School Library Journal (SLJ) featured the article"Digital Curation of Classics: Instagram project helps students find relevance in UPDATED 1/31/19 To Kill a Mockingbird" by Amanda Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence details a project she collaborated on with the freshman English teacher and piloted with ninth grade students.

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A Few Presentations from other Librarians 

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A Few Presentations from other Librarians 

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Feel free to make your own!

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LibGuides: COLONELS LIBRARY LHS: Teaching Resources

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Just read this one on SLJ

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I've never been a fan of evaluation checklists. They require serious cognitive lift, perhaps more lift than some content actually deserves. I am a big fan of what Mike Caufield calls moves, some sticky strategies we can all use to get closer to the truth.

Caufield, of Washington State University Vancouver, leads the Digital Polarization Initiative (DigiPo), the American Democracy Project's national effort to build student civic, information and web literacy by having students participate in a broad, cross-institutional project to fact-check, annotate, and provide context to the different news stories that show up in our Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Inspired by Caufield's work, the group hopes to change the way we teach information literacy in higher education and is currently piloting his fact-checking framework across ten university campuses.

Mike Caufield's highly practical ebook, Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers and Other People who Care is refreshing approach that challenges the conventional pedagogical approaches and attempts to bust a few long-standing myths (described in greater detail in the video above):

1. The problem is that our students are gullible. In fact, the greater risk is cynicism.

2. Critical thinking will save us. In fact, it might do harm. In the case of disinformation, the goal is to capture attention. When you engage with a bad actor, you allow them to steal your attention to better treatments of an issue.

3. There is a crisis of truth. In fact, it's a crisis of reputation. Today expertise is undervalued. A curriculum around how to quickly assess reputation is essential.

When confronted with a claim that may not be 100% true, Caufield suggests the following four moves to get closer to the truth:

Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.

Go upstream to the source: Go "upstream" to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.

Read laterally: Read laterally. Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network. [See the SHEG study listed below.]

Circle back: If you get lost, hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You're likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

And there's also a habit, Check your emotions.

When you feel strong emotion--happiness, anger, pride, vindication--and that emotion pushes you to share a "fact" with others, STOP. Above all, these are the claims that you must fact-check.

Why? Because you're already likely to check things you know are important to get right, and you're predisposed to analyze things that put you an intellectual frame of mind. But things that make you angry or overjoyed, well... our record as humans are not good with these things.

You may also be interested in the very relevant SHEG study that challenges the way many universities and K12 schools teach evaluation through close vertical reading of an article:

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2017). Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information

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Four Moves and a Habit to share with your middle and high school learners

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I've never been a fan of evaluation checklists. They require serious cognitive lift, perhaps more lift than some content actually deserves. I am a big fan of what Mike Caufield calls moves, some sticky strategies we can all use to get closer to the truth.

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A practical guidebook for trainers

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Google Drawings, part of the Google Apps suite, can also be used to create an infographic. It does layer-based image editing very well, as you can see by this infographic I created. And students can use the Google Research tool to locate CC-licensed images to use in the infographic. ( Key commands for Google Drawings)

Kathy Poe at The Fletcher School had her students create an infographic as part of a larger research project. She graciously shared the work!

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Infographics are a visual representation of data. When students create infographics, they are using information, visual, and technology literacies. This page includes links to help you develop...

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Really great media production curriculum based on human rights issues

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Inspiring flexible Student Curriculum | Rock Your World CA

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Rock Your World a program of the Creative Visions Foundation in Malibu, CA that has flexible curriculum that engages middle and high school students to use creative outlets and media to take action towards issues they care about.