Technology has transformed how information is accessed and shared, bringing opportunities and challenges to our classrooms. In this wild west of the Internet, as educators, we find ourselves in serious need of superhero skills to empower students to thrive in a dynamic and interconnected world – where misinformation lurks in the shadows, emojis function as … read more »
80% of middle schoolers mistake sponsored content for real news 3 in 4 students can’t distinguish between real and fake news on Facebook Fewer than 1 in 3 students are skeptical of biased news sources (ISTE Fake News Infographic 2017) As educators, what can we do to make sure our students are not counted as … read more »
Fake news and stories about fake news are everywhere right now. In a recent blog post, I shared criteria for judging online resources, including news stories, using the CRAAP test. However, since this topic is of critical importance to our students, it merits another look. In fact, digitally literate teachers who teach their students to … read more »
The New York Times was first published on September 18, 1851! The world was a very different place then. Today the words Fake News are a stark reminder of the amount of information our students receive every day. How can we help our students know what is real and what is fake? By teaching Media Literacy. According … read more »
The modification of media has been happening for a very long time. The image above was published in 1902 as a depiction of General Grant at City Point. According to the Library of Congress, this is actually three photos combined in to one: the head is from an image of Grant at his Cold Harbor, … read more »
June 30 is the 10th anniversary of the recognition of Social Media Day. Although every day is Social Media Day, this date points out the importance of thinking about the impact of social media on our lives. Also, it is imperative that we include thinking about how we teach the responsible use of social media … read more »
Digital citizenship has come into greater focus for educators over the years as misinformation has begun to dominate social media news feeds. According to a 2024 fact sheet from Pew Research Center, more than 54% of American adults receive their news from social media outlets, and we know this number is much higher for younger … read more »
A letter from Sherlock to Watson My dear Watson, In a world overflowing with information, the ability to distinguish truth from deception is a skill as critical as any detective’s keen eye. This is why I find the study of ‘media literacy’ so intriguing—it is, in many ways, the modern art of deduction. I was … read more »
Let’s take a minute to talk about artificial intelligence (AI). The Terminator, Blade Runner, and The Matrix warned everyone about the dangers of AI, but it’s been unleashed on an unsuspecting world, and we need to navigate it. At first, we struggled to keep it in check: students turned in horrific AI-generated essays, and teachers lamented the loss of … read more »
The Internet changed forever in 1998 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google. After a quick Google search, you’ll learn that Google was founded on September 4, 1998. However, Google changed its celebration date to September 27 in 2006 to coincide with the announcement of the record number of pages that the search engine … read more »