iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Since the 2016 election, a number of independent media organizations and industrious individuals have set out on an ambitious task: to fix the truth. Can a new wave of fact-checking solve the fake news problem?

Look at this, y'all! It's the cover of a top secret project I've been working on with my friend Darren Hudgins for the last year(ish!)

I'll go into the why and how of this project at some point in the future, but for right now, we really need your help. Part of what we're doing with this book is collecting data on how educators (of all stripes, not just school librarians, but certainly school librarians, too!) are teaching media literacy in the age of "Fake News." We're seeking to find out how/if schools are grappling with this problem, while also identifying what strategies are currently working in the field.

This is where you come in!

To help us, will you please take a few minutes to fill out this brief survey? It would mean the world to us!

Those of us who grew up in a pre-Internet world probably remember passing through grocery store checkout aisles lined with copies of the National Enquirer and other tabloids, with outrageous headlines proclaiming “BAT CHILD FOUND IN CAVE,” “HILLARY CLINTON ADOPTS ALIEN BABY,” or “DOLPHIN GROWS HUMAN ARMS.” Even as children, it was easy to distinguish those fake stories from real news, not just because of the sensational claims but also because of the telltale fonts and the obviously manipulated or fabricated images. Looking back, the division between fake news and authentic journalism seemed quite clear.

In today’s world, however, the line between real and fake seems increasingly blurred and uncertain. False stories are no longer relegated to tabloid publications but instead have infiltrated more mainstream media sources and social networking services. While the ludicrous claims of tabloid fare were meant mostly to entertain, today’s fake news is a more insidious specimen; in many cases, there is a sinister intent to its creation and dissemination. Indeed, the dictionary.com definition of fake news reads: “false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared online for the purpose of generating ad revenue via web traffic or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc” [emphasis added].

New audio and video software will make media manipulations harder to detect. These essential media literacy questions can help.

Fake news has been on Maggie Farley's mind further back than 2016 when President Trump brought the term into the vernacular.

Farley, a veteran journalist, says we've had fake news forever and that "people have always been trying to manipulate information for their own ends," but she calls what we're seeing now "Fake news with a capital F." In other words, extreme in its ambition for financial gain or political power.

"Before, the biggest concern was, 'Are people being confused by opinion; are people being tricked by spin?' " Now, Farley says, the stakes are much higher.

So one day she says an idea came to her: build a game to test users' ability to detect fake news from real.

Voilà, Factitious. Give it a shot. (And take it from us, it's not as easy as you might think!)

Every year Patrick Engleman plays a little trick on his students. The high school chemistry teacher introduces his ninth-graders in suburban Philadelphia to an insidious substance called dihydrogen monoxide. It's "involved in 80 percent of fatal car crashes. It's in every single cancer cell. This stuff, it'll burn you," he tells them.

In the wake of a contentious election season that was influenced by fake news, we examine whether existing technological solutions fix the problem.

Factitious is a game for testing your skill at identifying fake and misleading news stories. The game was developed by the American University Game Lab and the American University's School of Communication. I learned about the game last month when Larry Ferlazzo featured it and I have since shared it in a couple of professional development workshops. It was a hit in both workshops in which I shared it with teachers.

Jonathan Jarry's job is to separate sense from nonsense in science, but he never imagined that creating a fake news video would end up being his most effective tool.

Facebook users may be familiar with his latest video for McGill University's Office for Science and Society (OSS) — it has 10 million views and counting.

The video title screams for a click: "This NATURAL TRICK can CURE YOUR CANCER." The opening graphic offers another too-good-to-be-true promise: "This amazing cure for cancer has been known since the 1800s."

You’ve seen them before: Facebook posts designed to grab your attention and stop your scrolling. There are many versions.  Some tug at your heartstrings with lines like “Ten cute puppies that will melt your heart” or “Let Suzy know she is still beautiful, even after surgery.” Other versions offer exciting prizes, such as “Like this post and click on the link for a free first-class flight to anywhere in the US!” Unfortunately, many of these posts are created by scammers, striving to collect as many Facebook “likes” as possible.

"A few days ago we shared with you a new Google feature that allows you to easily fact check online content. Today, we are sharing with you 10 good tips that will enable you to critically assess the veracity and credibility of online content (e.g. news stories).  These are guidelines Facebook Help Centre provided for it users to help them spot fake news. However, these tips can also apply to any other type of content. Students can use them to evaluate digital content and enhance their critical reading comprehension.  We have embedded these tips into the visual below so you can print and share with your students in class. You can also download a PDF copy from this page. Enjoy."

"As the bell rings, students file into class at Maxence Van der Meersch middle school. This morning the kids have a visitor — investigative journalist Thomas Huchon.

Without telling them the topic of his visit, Huchon says he's going to show them a mini-documentary.

The video claims that the CIA spread the AIDS virus in Cuba, and says that was the real reason behind the decades-long U.S. embargo. It was only lifted, the narrator says, so American and French pharmaceutical companies could cash in on an AIDS vaccine developed by Cuban doctors.

The students don't yet know it, but Huchon and his colleagues at video news network Spicee created the video themselves, as part of an experiment after the French terrorist attacks in 2015. They noticed how conspiracy theories against the official version of the attacks were spreading on the Internet, and they wanted to do their own experiment."

FEBRUARY 22, 2018 —From the instant replay that decides a game to the bodycam footage that clinches a conviction, people tend to trust video evidence as an arbiter of truth.

But that faith could soon become quaint, as machine learning is enabling ordinary users to create fabricated videos of just about anyone doing just about anything.

Earlier this month, the popular online forum Reddit shut down r/deepfakes, a subreddit discussion board devoted to using open-source machine-learning tools to insert famous faces into pornographic videos. Observers say this episode represents just one of the many ways that the this technology could fuel social problems, particularly in an age of political polarization. Combating the negative effects of fabricated video will require a shift among both news outlets and news consumers, say experts. 

“Misinformation has been prevalent in our politics historically,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., who specializes in political misperceptions. “But it is true that technology can facilitate new forms of rumors and other kinds of misinformation and help them spread more rapidly than ever before.”

So-called fake news has been around long before Macedonian teenagers began enriching themselves by feeding false stories to social media users. In 1782, Benjamin Franklin printed a falsified supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle maligning Seneca Indians in an attempt to influence public opinion during peace negotiations with Britain.

Do students need to learn about fake news? And more generally, should they learn how news is created and how to evaluate its credibility?

Thousands of schools all over the world believe the answer is yes.

Hoaxy visualizes the spread of claims and related fact checking online. A claim may be a fake news article, hoax, rumor, conspiracy theory, satire, or even an accurate report. Anyone can use Hoaxy to explore how claims spread across social media.

On April 14, 2014, the terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok, Nigeria. Around the world, the crime became epitomized by the slogan #BringBackOurGirls -- but in Nigeria, government officials called the crime a hoax, confusing and delaying efforts to rescue the girls. In this powerful talk, journalist Stephanie Busari points to the Chibok tragedy to explain the deadly danger of fake news and what we can do to stop it.