Monday, August 20, 2018

News Literacy Project and Checkology

Another resource aiming to help younger people engage with news information critically, I think chiefly supported by those in journalism (and also by Facebook). The North American News Literacy Project https://newslit.org/ has announced that their Checkology resource has been refreshed. "The News Literacy Project is a national education nonprofit offering nonpartisan, independent programs that teach students how to know what to believe in the digital age."
Checkology has a series of online lessons/tutorials. You can sign up as a student or teacher. I did get part way through teacher registration, but whilst you can identify yourself as from a country outside the USA it insists on you selecting a US state and then a corresponding school district, which I found irritating. However I assume you can put in a false location to get registered and I might try it again later.
It says that students will learn to: "Categorize information; Make and critique news judgments; Explore how the press and citizens can each act as watchdogs; Detect and categorize misinformation; Interpret and apply the First Amendment; Compare the ways that different countries protect or restrict press freedom; Identify logical fallacies and evaluate arguments; Investigate the impact of personalization algorithms; Evaluate bias and learn about confirmation bias". The website is at https://checkology.org/
I found out about it from a press release at https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/fact-checking-the-future-the-news-literacy-project-expands-online-classroom-for-youth-1027462117
Photo by Sheila Webber: the sea, Brighton, July 2018

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