Combatting fake news is a huge part of today's society. Actually, I didn't realize how many sites there were to help and combat this until this class. We learned about the awesome power of Politifact and checking sites biases as well as whether or not they post relevant information that's well informed or just utter nonsense with Media Bias/Fact Check. I think Media Bias/Fact Check is probably my new favourite information gathering website because it tells you where the website lands on the bias scale and then it also tells you how much they write and whether or not it's factual! Plus, it's a super easy website to use!
Now in turn, how do we fit this into the curriculum? I think it would be really useful in Chemistry or science if students were using it to do research papers or just generally look up cool scientific finds! If they see an article that's very controversial in the science field and look up who's reporting it and whether they have a long track record of being false or a far right/left bias then the news might be false or a really big stretch from the truth. I will definitely use these tools to my advantage in the classroom because they can help me remain in the middle and report new and cool things factually while still remaining unbiased towards either side. Since I'm majoring in math, it is going to be a little difficult fitting it into their curriculum, but I'm sure on the side of secondary workplace math, we can see if there's some new and upcoming information about wages, salaries, self employment, etc (all apart of the latter half of outcomes in Workplace Apprenticeship Math 10, 20, and 30)
Some other sources to be used in the classroom are the quizzes:
Both of these sources are fun ways to get your students engaged with learning how to combat fake news and opens up the discussion to how to spot fake headlines/trolls on the internet. It also helps them understand that not everything is as it seems on the internet as well, plus they're fun to do!
What do you guys think about Media Bias and Fact Checking? Will you be using it? How will you be teaching your students/kids how to combat fake news?
Comments