News Literacy Project to launch professional development for teachers nationwide

The series, Teaching News Literacy, is part of NLP’s new fee-for-service program that includes its classroom and after-school programs, as well as in-person professional development, in the project’s major markets of New York City, Chicago and the Washington, D.C., region.

Prices for both online and in-person professional development are modest and provide educators with a foundational understanding of this vital 21st-century subject area. Workshop participants will also receive guidance on a collection of free tools and resources that will help them immediately begin incorporating news literacy in their classrooms.

The online series will begin Nov. 12 with an overview of news literacy. Each lesson will be one hour long and will be led by Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president for educational programs, and other experienced NLP trainers.

The other online lessons will be:

• Dec. 10, 2014:   “Exploring Bias”
• Jan. 14, 2015:    “News Literacy and Civic Engagement”
• Feb, 18, 2015:    “21st-century Trends, Tools and Skills”

Educators can register here for the entire series for $95 or for individual sessions for $30 each.

Schools in New York City, Chicago and the Washington, D.C., region that are interested in bringing NLP trainers to their school for customized, in-person professional development training can inquire here. In-person training includes a comprehensive 90-minute overview of news literacy and three topic-specific sessions, chosen from the list below:

• “News Literacy and Civic Engagement” – Explore the role of news and information in today’s civic life.
• “News Analysis” – Learn about key concepts of news literacy and how students can use them to evaluate the credibility of information.
• “21st-Century Information Trends” – A summary of current trends and tools in today’s digital media. landscape with tips on how to help students be smarter, more savvy consumers of information.
• “The First Amendment” – Learn how to use historic case studies of investigative journalism to teach students about the First Amendment and the watchdog role of the press.
• “Exploring Bias” – Understand the journalistic ideal of neutrality and explore different types of bias to enable participants to structure their own learning experiences to help students develop their understanding of this complex topic.
• “PBL Approaches to News Literacy” – Use project-based learning principles to help guide news literacy education.
• “Fact-Checking” – Review tools and platforms to support fact-checking activities.
• “Integration and Inter-Disciplinary Strategies” – Discover best practices for integrating news literacy learning in a semester or school year across various subject areas.
• “Creation Session” – Develop original news literacy lessons with guidance and direction from NLP staff.
• “Student Journalism and Media-Making” – Empower teachers to help students apply news literacy learning by creating their own projects.

For further information, or to register, contact Nell Lennon at [email protected].