Combating Fake News And Teaching Digital Literacy

If the most recent U.S. Election has taught us anything it's that we live in an era of fake news and sites. With accusations flying of manipulation of stories, the media and voters, it’s truly hard to know if what we read on blogs, social media and other sites is actually the truth or a tale spun to generate clicks.

To further compound the problem a recent study from Stanford shows that the vast majority of students can’t determine it what they read on websites is true or baloney. The study showed More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn’t see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing site provided strong evidence of toxic conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, even though no source or location was given for the photo.

With many schools and districts rolling out 1:1 initiatives and a push to digitize learning, helping students understand where their information comes from, and if it is reliable and accurate are critical skills, not just for learning for but life as well.

When I was teaching digital literacy to students in my 8th grade science classroom we would examine current event articles for reliability and truthfulness. Loosely we used the following criteria:

• Where was the information published? Was it a .com/.edu/.org site? Anyone can create a webpage? Was the source someone we could trust? 
• When was the information posted? Or, how long ago was it updated? How can you tell? 
• What do you know about the author? What else have they written? 
• Can you verify the information posted on another website you’ve already determined to be accurate and reliable? 

While we can still use many of these same “look-for’s” a deeper understanding of where information comes from and judging it for accuracy and reliability is crucial. As teachers we need to have an understanding ourselves where information comes from so we can help guide students through their own understanding.

Here are several resources to use for professional learning as well as some to use in the classroom. These span all grade levels and subject areas.

Fake News and What We Can Do About It-The folks over at the ADL have a great HS lesson plan for looking at fake news and learn specific skills to determine it what they read, especially on social media (where 90% of Millennials get their news) can be trusted.

How To Spot Fake News (And Teach Kids To Be Media Savvy)-I lean on Common Sense Education for a lot of great resources when it comes to Digital Literacy and this post from them is no different. They have expanded on the “look-for’s” I used in my classroom and added questions to ask like who is paying for this content and more. There are loads of great ideas here and a resource not to be missed.

Snopes-This site has been around on the internet for a really long time and their mission is to help readers determine it what they read or hear is true or not. Everything from urban legends, to posts on Facebook that promise money it you share it to, current events. They have everything. And they can help students see how to vet stories because everything is linked to proof.

How To Teach Students To Evaluate The Quality Of Online Information-This article has more tips on ways to help students evaluate the information they read online.

Crap Detection-From Howard Rheingold this video and related resources is worth a watch for any educator. Howard explains how we can hone our built in filters when we are evaluating information and how we can help students do the same.

Real News vs. Fake News: Determining The Reliability of Sources-This from the New York Times Learning Network is a full lesson plan to help students look at information in ways they might not be doing already. What’s great is the plan can be adapted to any grade level so even younger students can start learning about reliability of information.

What Are You Doing To Help Students Spot Fake News Stories? Bill Ferriter is someone I’ve followed for a long time because he helps push my thinking. This blog post asks some tough questions of educators and offers many suggestions and ideas for helping students look for fake news and information in their learning.

Depending on the news or information you may or may not want to use current events or actual news articles, especially with younger students. But there are still sites you can use to help students look for fake information and teach them these important skills. My friend Shaelynn Farnsworth has a curated list of websites that contain no real information but students will encounter if they are doing research on a wide variety of topics.

These skills of evaluating fake news and information for reliability and validity are part of a wider and more comprehensive Digital Literacy program. It you don’t have one or don’t know where to start, Common Sense Education has a K-12 program that is full of additional resources, lesson plans and more.

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Teaching Educator Digital Literacy With A Pinterest Party

This post is sponsored by Samsung. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

I will freely admit that Pinterest is one of those services that I haven't been a big user of. When it first appeared my wife took to it instantly. Now, she is a teacher but she didn't go in the hunt of resources for the classroom. She was looking for recipes, design ideas and oddly enough, wedding dresses (we were already married so I'm still not really sure about that one).

During a multi-day workshop I was running in one of my schools a few years ago, we had teachers divide up in to curriculum teams to investigate and find resources for a unit of study they felt they were weak in. As soon as we turned them loose to get started, multiple hands went into the air.

"Why is Pinterest blocked?"

"I need to get to Pinterest to get started and I can't!"

I heard this over and over from across the room. The teachers, when setting out on a task to find resources for their classroom were not going to Google like they had done traditionally. They went to Pinterest to find what they needed. I had no idea it's popularity (nor did I know it was blocked in our schools). I had it unblocked and teachers went about their way.

But then we had a problem.

Most of the resources they were finding and wanting to use just weren't right. Some where not aligned to the correct content area. Others were just not pedagogically strong. And still others were copyrighted material that should have never been posted in the first place. The problems came when the teachers said the lessons looked great, or pretty, or fun. They weren't evaluating the resource, rather they were evaluating the look of the resource.

I am sure there are wonderful resources for the classroom and learning that are posted there. Many folks that you know through social media have boards there on a variety of subject areas. But Pinterest wasn't designed for sharing instructional resources. It's a visual medium for food and design and fashion. So if we are going to use it to share instructional resources, we have to take additional steps to ensure what we are finding is right for the classroom.

Traditional professional development in the realm of digital literacy can be quite boring. With all PD we have to rethink the way we do professional learning, especially when thinking about technology related PD. The learning needs of the educators has to be considered as well as the classroom environment.

This led me to an idea.

Curation and digital literacy are such necessary skills today. Understanding where to find the best information, how to vet that information, organize and share that information are crucial skills in this digital age. (Shameless plug-So important I wrote a book about it!) What if we combined the values of curation and resource sharing on Pinterest into an event.

A Pinterest Party!

The way it works.

Invite anyone, teachers, coaches, instructional staff to your Pinterest party. These could be teachers of the same subject or grade level or a mix of the two; however you want to do it. Then there are 2 rules. They must bring a board of resources they've collected that they are using in the classroom for an upcoming unit of study. And they must bring a dish that they found on Pinterest to share with everyone.

Who wouldn't want to come to a professional development with tons of food!

While we are trying out all these great dishes of food we can get down to business. Talking about digital literacy. For each resource participants need to answer 4 questions:

• Where did the resource come from? Can you tell from the post who the original poster of the information was?
• Based on where the information came from, is it copyrighted? Can you reproduce it, post it yourself, or even use it without proper license? 
• Is the resource aligned? Look at your standards/units/instructional plans and decide, does this resource help you meet a teaching goal? 
• Will this resource help students learn? The most important question to answer, we have to look past how fun or "cute" a resource looks and determine if it will really help students meet an instructional objective. 

The goal is less about the actual resource finding and more about teaching those necessary digital literacy skills to find the best information in the classroom.

While Pinterest can be great medium for finding resources we've got to ensure they are the best resources.

For more content like this, follow Samsung on Insights, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and SlideShare.

Photo credit: balloons via photopin (license)

Curating Content with @appoLearning

Curation, as many of you know, is near and dear to my heart. (Heck I even wrote a book on the subject!) And especially now, for teachers, its becoming increasingly important as more and more digital devices begin to enter the classroom. Finding the right apps, videos or other digital resources can be tough. And keeping it all organized can be even tougher.

I was excited to learn about appoLearning. This is a great resource where educators can find and share all the digital resources they are curating. All of the resources found there are vetted by other educators so you can trust that what you are search for will be the best of the best.

Recently they unveiled Collections. And this is something I am really excited about.

appoLearning Collections enable teachers to create, annotate and share lists of hand picked digital resources, including YouTube videos, iOS and Android apps, and websites, around specific subjects, topics or lessons. Collection creators can easily:

• select from thousands of expert-vetted, standards-aligned resources from appoLearning search
• and/or add their own resources (including anything that is URL-addressable including videos, apps, websites, assessments, Dropbox links, Google Drive links, Evernote links) and upload their own files (Photos, Lesson Plans, Videos, PowerPoints, PDFs, etc.). 

Collections empower teachers to continually manage the use of great digital resources into their classroom and to share these with peers, parents, students, and administrators.

Creating a Collection couldn’t be easier.


Click or tap “Create a Collection” to get started. From there, login via Facebook, Google or Twitter to get started. Once one has named, described and tagged a collection, there are three simple and fast ways to build it.

Some things to remember:

1. Resources for any Collection can be pulled from the thousands of digital resources already vetted by appoLearning experts. Simply type in the search term on appoLearning, or browse by subject, grade-level, device and Common Core Standard, to find a list of vetted resources. While searching, one can also filter to show only FREE options. Simply press the “Add” button next to each resource to add to a collection. Click the “View” button to go back to the collection at any point.
2. Add in resources from other collections by simply pressing the “Add” button for individual selections or the “Add All” button to grab the entire collection
3. Digital resources that are not included in appoLearning search can also be added to a Collection. Simply paste the relevant URL - any URL, including those that point to a website, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play,  Prezi, Pinterest, Vimeo, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc., - of the selected educational resource, and it will be instantly added to the appoLearning database and included in the collection.
4. Files can also be uploaded to be shared via a collection.Simply drag and drop the file - any digital file including photos, videos, lessons plans, quizzes, powerpoints, pictures, Smart Notebook software and more - and it will also be added to your appoLearning Collection.

We know that one of the most important parts of the curation process is sharing and sharing a Collection is easy. Each collection has its own unique URL that can be shared via email, messaging, or any social media channel.  appoLearning includes an embed feature to include the collection on a website in addition to one-click sharing for Twitter and Facebook.  .

All appoLearning Collections can be found via the search box at top of the Collections page or by using the tag navigation to the left of that page. So you will be able to see what others are creating and use those as a starting point for your own collections too.

You are probably thinking to yourself, what’s the catch. There has to be a subscription or a feee to do this. Nope. appoLearning Collections are free of charge.  As you begin to plan and organize your lessons for the upcoming year (after some well-deserved time off!), I encourage you to start creating and sharing your own Collections of resources to understand how easy - and addictive! - it can be.

The folks at appoLearning are getting tremendous feedback from teachers on how to make the product even better, as well as a lot of special requests for how schools and districts can best take advantage of the platform and technology.

You can get started right away, or contact them for a personal demo so YOU can become that teacher everyone turns to for recommendations.

Why Curation Matters

I spend a great deal of time looking up stuff. Whether that stuff is blog posts to get a pulse on what is happening in the edusphere or researching new tools to share with teachers, I come across a wide variety of resources that I need to save, catalog and be able to come back to later. Curation is a large part of my day. 

But what is curation? Why is it important and how can you do it easily? 



I absolutely love this video. The definitions everyone gives for what curation means to them are so totally different yet the same.

The Internet has allowed us to retrieve as much information on any topic from pretty much any source we want. Wading through the junk can be tough. We have to rely on the collective knowledge of our friends and colleagues to help us sort the good from the bad. (Because remember, alone we are smart but together we are brilliant.)

But that is only half of the curation process.

Once we find the good we have to be able to store it and find it again. Having good tools at our disposal is crucial so that the hard work we go through to vet resources doesn't go to waste. These tools also allow us to share our learning and curated resources, adding to the global knowledge.

Curation is an important part of my learning and professional development process. I get a great deal of information from serivces like Twitter and blogs I read. That's the easy part. The more challenging is the filtering of the information and saving it for later so I can find it.

For that I rely on 3 important web tools in my arsenal.

Evernote-Hands down, my favorite app for organizing. Not only do I have it installed on every computer I have but on my mobile devices as well. With it I can organize everything I am doing into notebooks and notes. On the web I have the Clipper installed so I can snip quotes, references or parts of blog posts that I want to come back to. Best part? All the annotations come with it so it makes the citation later much easier. From my phone I can add to or edit my notes, insert photos or audio. No matter where I am or what I come across I can add it to my notes and notebooks in Evernote.  

Pocket-This is another app/program that I have everywhere. Since I do much of my information gathering through things like Twitter I need an easy way to save information without adding to to my master repository. I think of it like a way station. An opportunity to vet the resource before deciding I don't need it or transitioning it to a place for long term storage. With this browser extension I can, with the click of a button mark the site as something to read later. I can search by tag or key word and since I have it installed on my mobile devices I can read my saves when I have a moment or save something to my list when I am out and about. 

Diigo-This is another place I save web resources. Again with a browser extension I can take the items I am ready to permanently save and add them to my Diigo list. Oh and I can use the various tools there to annotate and mark up the pages and add any notes. I add tags to organize them and I can share all my saves with a link or two. If you are an educator you get even more perks like the ability to create accounts for your students, sharing lists of sites easily and creating groups so students can share resources. 

Curation is becoming increasingly important. Being able to filter information quickly and retrieve the saved information even quicker are skills we all need to develop and help kids develop too. These skills are going to prove very valuable in the future.

What tools do you use to curate information?

What tips or tricks have you developed along the way?

Quick List of Apps For Learners And Curators

When it comes to mobile learning there are loads of great sites for apps for kids and teachers. Everything from apps organized by Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to apps organized by grade level and subject area. It can be daunting to sort through all those apps to find the special ones for learning something new or curating information. 

What are they? Well my friend, here are my Top 10 Apps For Learners and Curators

(All of these are for iPad but you can find many, or an equivalent, in the Android Market as well)

1) Google Drive-Where would I be without Google Drive and Google Docs? Lost I am sure. My life is spent editing and creating documents, presentations and spreadsheets. And the ability to share those easily makes Google Docs my go-to app for editing, not only at the computer but on the go as well. I can edit, comment and view all my documents from this app, no matter where I am.

2) Dropbox-For those items I can’t keep in Google Docs, I use Dropbox. The app gives you access to all your files stored in the cloud so you can retrieve them, email them, view them, and show them, again, no matter where you are.

3) Adobe Ideas- You never know when a great idea is going to strike. Adobe Ideas is always at the ready to capture a drawing, sketch, list or what ever you need.

4) Pocket-I am a huge, huge fan of this app. Whenever you are reading a blog or come across a webpage that you just don’t have time to check out or don’t want to save it to your booksmarks before you have a chance to look at it, you can Pocket. Adding items to your list is easy as a checkmark in the address bar and the app gives you online and offline access to your entire list.

5) Diigo-Once you read all those saves in your pocket app, you need a way to curate them and retrieve them later. Diigo is that tool. Add to your library, tag and save. You can do everything from the app. Oh and you get the highlighter and clipping functions too. I use this one a lot from my tablets simply because I can curate anywhere I happen to be. 

6) Google Hangouts-I like having an office, because I can duck in there and shut the door and get some work done. But let's face it, out in the world is where we should be. Google Hangouts lets me untether myself from my office and have a meeting, learning session or just conversation anywhere. The ability to video chat with up to 9 other folks is a big advantage and we can document share, desktop share and more. The best part? I am mobile so I can do it from anywhere and still take part in the learning!

7) Zite-This is a Social Aggregator that takes topics you decide and pulls the most relevant stories related to those topics. They are then presenting and a pretty neat magazine format. And you can share what you read via Twitter, Facebook and email. So you can keep up with topics in education and share them with ease.

8) Google Translate-In many of our schools English might not be the main language spoken. The Google Translate app is great for helping to break the language barrier with students and staff and you can put in text and get instant translations for emails and documents. And, you might just be able to teach yourself too. 

9) TED-These are inspiring talks given from some of the brightest minds on the planet. This app gives you access to the entire directory. You can use the TED talks build morale and challenge the thinking of your staff and students.

10) Dragon Dictation-Let’s face it, sometimes typing on the iPad can be challenging. Dragon Dictation does it all for you. Using the built-in mic you can dictate memos, documents, blog posts and more.

There are loads more apps out there for all different sorts of uses. Check out this post to learn more about how you can get more mileage out of your mobile learning device. 

What are your favorite apps for learning and curating. Leave some suggestions in the comments below!

photo credit: Kalexanderson via photopin cc

Curating Content

I do a whole lot of research. Whether I am preparing a workshop or writing a keynote I am constantly looking up information and trying to figure out the best ways to organize it all so I can not only recall what I am saving but to make sure I have it, no matter where I am working. 

I have three, go-to apps and programs I use on a daily basis for just that: 

Evernote-Hands down, my favorite app for organizing. Not only do I have it installed on every computer I have but on my mobile devices as well. With it I can organize everything I am doing into notebooks and notes. On the web I have the Clipper installed so I can snip quotes, references or parts of blog posts that I want to come back to. Best part? All the annotations come with it so it makes the citation later much easier. From my phone I can add to or edit my notes, insert photos or audio. No matter where I am or what I come across I can add it to my notes and notebooks in Evernote. (I wrote some posts recently about how I am using and ways others are using it as well. You can see them here and here. 

ReadItLater-This is another app/program that I have everywhere. Believe it or not I do a lot of my researching on Twitter. Either following a hashtag or asking people to send me stuff. Often times I don't have time to look at everything as it is coming in so that is when I can ReadItLater. With this browser extension I can, with the click of a button mark the site as something to read later. I can search by tag or key word and since I have it installed on my mobile devices I can read my saves when I have a moment or save something to my list when I am out and about. 

Diigo-This is another place I save web resources. Again with a browser extension I can take the items I am ready to permanently save and add them to my Diigo list. Oh and I can use the various tools there to annotate and mark up the pages and add any notes. I add tags to organize them and I can share all my saves with a link or two. If you are an educator you get even more perks like the ability to create accounts for your students, sharing lists of sites easily and creating groups so students can share resources. 

Of course there are lots of other ways to curate content. Even using something simple like a Google Form or Doc could work. I believe the thing to consider when curating content is how are you going to have access to it. I like to be able to access my content anywhere and from any type of device, easily. Thats why Evernote, ReadItLater and Diigo are my go-to apps and programs for curating digital content. 

Cross Posted Over At Easybib