One of the most important skills today’s learners need is crap detection. Information is freely available – weeding through it all to find the useful bits and putting them together coherently are the keys to survival.
One of my favorite books is David Brin’s Earth. Written in 1990, Brin clearly saw the future that a connected world would bring to information. In his book, each person can filter the news they receive, only seeing posts that agree with his/her political views and actively blocking any alternate viewpoints. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? If we only see posts we agree with, how will we learn? How can we be educated voters or consumers? We and our student learners must learn to distinguish between real and fake information to make informed decisions. In short, we must (using Hemingway’s term), become crap detectors.
[Side note: Is it inappropriate to use the term ‘crap detectors’ with children? Personally, I feel this is a far more understandable and engaging phrase than ‘content curation’. I might not use the illustrative term with elementary students, but certainly with middle & high school. Luckily, I work at a high school!]
To empower our learners, the skills we need to explicitly teach and practice include:
- Determining the bias & credibility of the author
- Recognizing bias and manipulative text
- Considering age of the source, depending on the topic
- Interpreting statistics and how they can be misused
These skills must be taught in every discipline, for they are relevant to all of them! Whenever learners seek information, they should utilize their critical thinking skills. It must become second nature. We need to model this for our students – cite our sources, discuss their relevancy, point out manipulation and distinguish between fact and opinion. We also need to make sure our information is current. Both the tools and the techniques change as the internet evolves.
Here are some sources of useful tips. Please comment below with your favorites!
- Content Curation and Crap Detection: https://elearningindustry.com/content-curation-crap-detection-10-ways-detect-crap
- Center for News Literacy: https://www.centerfornewsliteracy.org/ (includes up-to-date curriculum resources)
- New Media Consortium Webinar on Digital Literacy: https://youtu.be/UnrUTPb-Bfs
- How I Detect Fake News: https://medium.com/@timoreilly/how-i-detect-fake-news-ebe455d9d4a7
- Snopes Fake News Archive: https://www.snopes.com/category/facts/fake-news/
- Verifying Tweets When News Breaks: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2013/verifying-tweets-when-news-breaks-qa-with-the-nyts-jennifer-preston-0.html