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As Ebonee mentioned last month, I’m the new kid on the NewsLit Nation block, ready to start the school year with you, fresh and re-energized. It is my honor to support you and your efforts in building a more just and news-literate environment for your students and community. We have big plans to help you teach news literacy, including new resources and a monthly prize giveaway for those who have posted or shared a resource in NewsLit Nation’s online forum. If you haven’t yet signed up, now is a good time!
As you may know, our News Literacy Ambassador Program is an innovative initiative to amplify regional organizing efforts in the fight against misinformation. We are pleased to announce its expansion and a call for applications from educators living in Denver, Iowa, Texas, Pittsburgh and the San Francisco Bay Area. Being a news literacy ambassador empowers you to make a difference and can be rewarding, with a participant recently telling us it was “a tremendously gratifying experience for my own understanding of what it means to be news-literate.”
If you want to join these passionate advocates for news literacy education and make a difference in your community, apply before Sept. 12. To learn more, please visit our website and email us at [email protected] with any questions.
Read on to learn more about upcoming opportunities and resources. |
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| Professional Learning |
Getting started with Checkology®: Aug. 19, 30 or Sept. 15
Choose your preferred date for our back-to-school webinar that will help you use NLP’s Checkology virtual classroom to prepare your students to become more news-literate. Learn more about what news literacy is, its relevance to your subject area, and how to use the platform and design a course that will engage your students.
#NLPchat: Aug. 26
Join @NewsLitProject team members and leading educators for a back-to-school Twitter chat from 4 to 5 pm ET. We'll discuss effective methods for teaching news literacy, including blended learning, and will share some of our newest and best resources. To take part, follow @NewsLitProject and #NLPChat.
NewsLitCamp®: Aug. 27
Don’t miss our national virtual NewsLitCamp® with our news partner, The 19th*. This FREE day of news literacy learning connects middle and high school teachers, librarians and educators across all disciplines with journalists and NLP experts to hone their ability to teach students how to sort fact from fiction. This event is sponsored by Google News Initiative.
| Avoiding the rabbit hole: Teaching concepts in conspiratorial thinking: Sept. 2 |
Join us for this edWeb webinar that explores teaching concepts regarding conspiratorial thinking and offers guidance on how to teach students to avoid conspiracy theories without exposing them to such falsehoods. This session explores the psychological and cognitive factors behind conspiratorial thinking, including the role of fear and anxiety, cognitive dissonance and biases, motivated reasoning and institutional cynicism. We will outline essential learning objectives and concepts and provide instructional resources for integrating them into your curriculum, including the Checkology lesson, “Conspiratorial Thinking".
Fall webinar series: Sept. 3, 10, 17 and 24:
Register for our free, four-part series of professional learning webinars focused on essential news literacy concepts and curriculum integration. Topics include teaching news literacy: how to get started, exploring the misinformation landscape, understanding bias and using NLP resources. |
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| Resources |
How about a NewsLitCamp in your district? NLP is seeking proposals from school districts to host a free virtual NewsLitCamp, a day-long professional development event in partnership with a local newsroom. Thanks to our sponsor, SmartNews, there is no cost to the district or to participating educators. It’s an outstanding opportunity to learn directly from NLP experts and reporters on how journalism operates, the thorough and exacting work of journalists to gather and verify information to inform their communities, and the role they play in protecting the public’s interests. Teachers leave energized to help their students think critically about the information they consume. Submit your application before the Sept. 3 deadline.
“News Literacy Foundations”: Check out our Flipgrid collection that explores foundational concepts of news literacy, which can help you set classroom expectations around research, fact-checking and digital literacy skills as well as establish a foundational knowledge of news literacy. Flipgrid is a simple, free and accessible video discussion platform.
NEW! How to teach news literacy in polarizing times: Use this infographic to guide your students through strategies for discussing the most important stories and issues of the day while navigating social and political divides and deepening classroom conversations.
I look forward to meeting you — virtually or in-person — at one of our many upcoming events.
Best regards,
Miriam Romais
Senior Manager, Educator Engagement
P.S. Be sure to tune in for the second season of our podcast Is that a fact?, which addresses false narratives and the impact they have on people’s lives and the country’s civic and cultural conversation. The first episode drops Sept. 8. |
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