Fake News is everywhere. Ever since I was in High School it has been drilled in my head that finding 3 sources for a topic means that it is most likely accurate information. At the time, I thought that it was an annoyance to have to support one piece of evidence with three seperate sources; however, now I understand that they wanted us to do this in order to understand how information online is not always accurate. My professor provided us with several sources that have a great outlook on Fake News, and she asked us to look into 3 of these sources. Here is my experience with these sources:
Source 1: You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you…
This source is amazing. It is a comic strip that is super well drawn, and gets the point across that you can use sources to determine if your information is accurate. This source takes information that society has collectively agreed on about the world (such as Houseflies only living for 24 hours) and it provides evidence to prove that our understanding of this is not actually accurate.
Suggested use for classrooms: This source would be amazing to use in a classroom and then have students create their own version of it. Have your students fact check a piece of information that they have believed since childhood, and then have them present it in the form of a comic.
Source 2: Spot the Troll
This source is hilarious. It provides you with an either legitimate or fake twitter account. Your job is to analyze the posts of this account and determine if this account is truly a legitimate account or not.
Suggested use for classrooms: this source would be great for in class use because it would encourage students to use their own critical thinking skills in order to determine if an account is real or not. You could have this ‘game’ on the projector and go through accounts together as a class because it would result in some great classroom discussions.
Source 3: Fake News: A Library Resource Round-Up
Finally, this source is incredible because it is essentially a hub that provides visitors with several resources on fake news! This hub has compiled these sources based on suggestions from a variety of people, which is wonderful because that results in a variety of sources being offered.
Suggested use for classrooms: In a classroom this source would be amazing to have as a QR Code posted within the classroom so that students can easily access it. This would serve useful because students would be able to reference this hub of sources whenever needed. Another use for this in a classroom would be allowing students to choose one of the sources in the hub and writing a paragraph explaining the source and their own opinion on it.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, fake news is everywhere, and our students will definitely fall victim to it over the course of their lives. It is our responsibility to teach the students how to fact check and provide them with sources such as the ones above to help them develop critical thinking skills.
Sarah Adams-Huber E-Portfolio 
One reply on “Digital Literacy and Fake News”
Hi Sarah,
Your third source is super cool! I really like the suggestion you have for implementing it in the classroom. Having it there for students to easily access is exactly what we need students to do. I know this isn’t put in place but if you do plan on doing this, make sure there are many ways to access the information, not just a QR code, some students may not have access to a cell phone to scan it.
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