While teenagers might annoy adults by questioning everything around them, their pushback can be a good thing. This is especially true when young people have the skills and abilities to make informed judgments. Educators who use the NLP’s Checkology® e-learning platform see this when students challenge social media algorithms that skew their view of the world.

“Just being aware of online personalization gives them some power to resist,” educator Mary Kate Lonergan said. She teaches eighth grade social studies at Eagle Hill Middle School in Manlius, New York.

Lonergan uses a variety of resources to give students a strong foundation in news literacy. They can then apply what they’ve learned when researching a controversial issue during a cross-curricular social studies/ELA project. The students soon discover how algorithms determine what content they see. Middle school students understand that their TikTok feed looks different from a classmate’s feed, based on the ads they click or topics they search, she said. However, they are surprised at how fast algorithms can send them deeper into a rabbit hole, narrowing their view. “They don’t have the concepts to identify what’s happening.”

Illustrating pitfalls of algorithms

Lonergan’s students demonstrated their grasp of the topic by creating memes that addressed the pitfalls of algorithms. Using humor, well-known people and animated characters, they conveyed the insidiousness of personalized ads, online privacy issues and filter bubbles.

“Creating media is an important piece of news literacy. It demystifies the process, and they can see that intentional choices are being made — content has a purpose,” Lonergan said. “If you understand how this works, you can’t be taken advantage of.”

Her students reflected on their discoveries:

• “Whenever I am on social media I can identify when I have fallen into rabbit holes and be able to stop myself from getting sucked in too much.”
• “This project opened me up to making sure that I use social media for its benefits, so that it can help make me — not break me.”
• “What’s important to know is that echo chambers that you find yourself in can be good on one side and bad on the other, and companies profit off of that.”

How algorithms and technology impact our lives

Similar discoveries are taking place nearly 1,000 miles away in Kerise Broome’s 10^th grade English honors class at James Island Charter High School in Charleston, South Carolina. Her students start the year by  studying the role of technology in their lives. “I truly feel that we’ve got to make up some ground where technology evolved too quickly, and we weren’t teaching news literacy as part of our standard curriculum,” she said.

She challenges her students to write essays that address the following questions: In what ways do you see that technology is outpacing our ability to control it and presenting us with threats to our existence? What can we do to solve these problems?

“The overwhelming majority of them are looking at online personalization the way most adults are looking at it,” she said. “They feel like victims and that they are the product. They don’t like that idea at all.”

‘They do understand what the dangers are’

To give them the content knowledge needed to answer those tough questions, Broome uses a combination of resources and methods. This includes the Checkology lessons “InfoZones,” “Misinformation” and “Understanding Algorithms,” the documentary film The Social Dilemma, and peer-to-peer class discussions. “A lot of the information was surprising to them, but they do understand what the dangers are,” Broome said.

The essays were excellent, she said, because of the students’ knowledge, interest in and engagement with the topic. They also shared thoughts on how to address the challenge of navigating the information landscape.

Some of their insights:

• “Checking multiple trusted websites instead of using social media as our main source of information is a way we can help solve the problem of receiving incorrect information about important topics we should be correctly educated on.”
• “Social media has implemented a special way to take and keep our attention, by using our interests and goals and showcasing them in our personalized feeds.”
• “The best thing you could do in order not to get caught up [in conspiracy theories] is to [do] your research! Fact check! If you see something on social media that you know or think is fake, don’t repost it.”

Lessons resonate

Broome has seen how teens value the skills and insight that becoming news-literate brings. “It just really echoed some of the things they have seen. It’s the most relevant thing I teach all year long,” she said.

Lonergan weaves news literacy into her curriculum throughout the year and believes it’s never too early to start. “Middle schoolers are ready for these conversations and want to talk about it,” she said. “News literacy is the vehicle through which we engage in the content. It’s not another thing to teach; it’s another way to teach.”

By Pamela Brunskill

Students today are immersed in a news and information landscape that pervades every aspect of their lives. From TikTok to Instagram to Twitter, they are inundated with posts, and many of them are not credible or legitimately grounded. It is difficult to know what is true. Because this environment is complex and riddled with misinformation, it provides a prime opportunity to authentically develop students’ critical thinking abilities.

Critical thinking defined

One of the most highly sought goals of educators is to get students to think critically. In a rough sense, this involves the skills and dispositions necessary to make an informed judgment. According to a meta-analysis on the subject, critical thinking is purposeful, methodical, and habitually inquisitive. Critical thinkers have the skills to interpret, analyze, and evaluate content; they are diligent and persistent in considering a question, and they approach life honestly and with an open mind.

While there is some debate whether the best approach to teaching critical thinking is through generic traits or through discipline-specific skills, a compromised approach allows students to develop both. If we follow the belief that students need context to accurately reason about a subject, then they must have some background knowledge in that subject. How else can they think critically about something? Further, how would that naive thinking compare to that of experts in the field? Regarding the news and information landscape, if students are going to think critically and be discerning with the content they share, then they must learn news literacy.

How to use news literacy to teach critical thinking

Step 1: Develop disciplinary literacy in the news

In an era of misinformation, students can evaluate information by learning how news is made. This includes explicit instruction in concepts and content such as identifying different types of information, recognizing the purpose or intent of pieces, understanding the watchdog role of the press, and recognizing quality arguments and evidence. It also includes explicit instruction of skills such as evaluating sources, identifying branded content, recognizing bias and motivated reasoning, and verifying evidence. Of course, students also need to demonstrate understanding of these concepts and practice these skills. In so doing, they gain disciplinary literacy, the notion of specialized reading practices for a field of study. Often, disciplinary literacy is framed as thinking like a mathematician, a historian, or a computer programmer. Regardless of the content area, students gain greater depth in their understanding of the underpinnings of that discipline. In this case, students learn to “think like a journalist.”

Example of developing disciplinary literacy: Jennifer Liang Twitter thread

Step 2: Teach topical content

Once students comprehend how news is made, they can deconstruct it and analyze its creation. But they also need the context surrounding the piece of news they’re reading and/or studying. To this end, teachers should provide explicit instruction in the topic at hand, whether it involves immigration, global warming, sports, health, statistics, or any other content area. This is where each discipline offers its own guidance, and as with all good teaching, this requires an effective approach to tackling reading comprehension. This might include studying vocabulary, writing about text through think sheets and short responses, and discussions, among other strategies. Then, students can explain a disciplinary concept such as immigration and explain why not all images of border walls are accurately portrayed in memes.

Why news literacy?

Of course, integrated studies between all subjects are possible, but there is a special partnership between English and social studies in relation to news literacy. The stakes are high: think about the consequences of misinformation as well as the potential for civic action. A lack of news literacy threatens democracy and our public health — just look at the conspiratorial thinking that led to the Capitol riots and erroneous claims about COVID-19. Conversely, when individuals have the competency to judge reliable and credible news, they can take civic action such as correcting a piece of misinformation, contacting elected officials, and participating responsibly in political discussions. Being accurately informed is crucial to participating in a democracy.

Example of disciplinary-specific content: Conspiratorial Thinking poster 

Critical thinking is critical in today’s world

Using the news in classrooms can authentically develop higher-level thinking skills and dispositions. Combining understanding of how journalism works along with topical content allows students to determine the credibility of information they encounter. This integration enables students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, explain, and make judgments — to think critically. By teaching news literacy, we can teach students the skills and habits of mind to not only navigate today’s information landscape, but also to navigate our society.

 

 

In spring 2020, with the world in lockdown and pandemic misinformation surging, Brad and Charlotte Krugh of Jackson, Wyoming, turned to NLP’s Checkology® e-learning platform to augment their older daughter’s distance learning.

Julia, now in eighth grade and attending school in-person, no longer uses NLP resources. But the Krughs remain committed to news literacy education. Charlotte Krugh’s perspective comes from her dual roles as a parent and as an NLP supporter. Her family’s Fore River Foundation is a funder of NLP.

“I really wish more schools would provide these programs. I can talk until I’m blue in the face about it, but when the librarian, the social studies teacher and the language arts teacher say you need to check your sources and verify information, it gets the kids’ attention,” she said.

The Krughs’ younger daughter Eliza, now a sixth grader in middle school, clearly paid attention when peering over Julia’s shoulder. When Eliza is watching TV or online, “she’ll shout out ‘fake news’ whenever she sees anything that’s not true.”

News literacy a family value

Krugh’s family was in the newspaper business, which is why news literacy is a focus of the family foundation. The importance of literacy and access to credible news was instilled early in her and her siblings. “There was a lot of education around how to be a literate human being,” she said, explaining why news literacy is a focus of the family foundation. “It’s one of the ways we want to give back. We really believe that being informed citizens is essential to democracy.”

She doesn’t have to look far to see that people need better access to credible information. While Jackson has a small but well-supported local newspaper, it is the community’s only local news outlet. That’s why some residents turn to social media for their news. “Many older people in this area get all their news from Facebook. We can’t get access to major news sources unless we go online,” she said.

For Krugh, this is a good illustration of why readily accessible news literacy education is needed not only for students in the classroom, but also for adults dealing with a wide range of information sources.

Just weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, we spoke with Iowa high school teacher Brian Winkel, who was helping his students navigate a flood of misinformation about the virus. The school had transitioned to distance learning, and Winkel was glad he had already discovered NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom. A few years earlier, he had developed a course on media awareness called 21^st Century Literacy, with the e-learning platform as an essential component of the curriculum. At the time, Winkel  told us Checkology was a “godsend.”

Inside an Iowa classroom

Educators and students returned to their classrooms at Cedar Falls High School this school year, and we recently caught up with Winkel and some of his students, creating videos of their lives in and out of school. Winkel told us why he believes news literacy remains so important to his students’ education and to their lives as they enter adulthood. “They have a hard time sorting out the truth,” he said of students when they begin his 21^st Century Literacy course. “I do see a change with kids after they come up through this class. I feel like not only am I teaching this class; I’m training kids to make this democracy work.” Hear more about Winkel’s story in the video below.

Student perspectives on news literacy

Seniors Ande McMorris and Colin Seeks might have different interests and world views, but they agree on the value of becoming more news-literate. Ande, captain of the football team, told us he knows there is a great deal of misinformation on social media, and thanks to Winkel’s class, he now understands the harm it can do and is better able to recognize it when he sees it. Watch Ande’s video below to hear his story:

Colin, who loves working on cars, said Winkel’s class introduced him to news literacy concepts, and this has helped him better appreciate his First Amendment rights and the impact that his vote has in a democracy. Watch the video below to hear Colin’s story.

We often use metaphors to describe the world of information that engulfs us — a landscape, a highway, an ecosystem. What about a cheeseburger, a hockey team, a solar system or a hibachi restaurant?

Those are among the “ecosystems” that seventh graders in Kenilworth, Illinois, chose as metaphors to describe major categories of information. Their work was part of a media literacy component in Jeff Rosen’s social studies class at the Joseph Sears School.

He uses NLP’s Checkology® lessons “InfoZones” and “Misinformation” to provide foundational news literacy concepts. Rosen asks students to reflect on their information habits and connect what they’ve learned to their lives.

“The purpose of the assignment is to challenge students to apply their understanding of the ‘InfoZones’ to a new context: selecting a system and its parts to represent the zones,” Rosen said. Those six categories are news, opinion, advertising, entertainment, raw information and misinformation. “By critically thinking about the ‘InfoZones’ in this way, students will be able to remember and understand them at a much deeper cognitive level.”

That’s where the cheeseburger, solar system and other analogies plucked from the students’ daily lives factor in.

Last year, Rosen asked students to create posters and write about what they learned, and he shared that work with NLP. This year he asked them to make videos for the Microsoft education platform Flipgrid. “The video component allows students to practice verbalizing their thoughts. It also increases student engagement by connecting the curriculum to something they do and see all the time in their lives outside of school,” Rosen explained.

‘InfoZones’ ecosystems

Consider the examples from the videos below.

• The supply cart represents raw information in Noa Boeing’s hibachi restaurant ecosystem. “The supply cart holds all the necessary ingredients for a successful hibachi restaurant. The ingredients and supplies in the cart are unchanged until the chef decides to use them.”
• Winston Ottsen selected the coach to illustrate the opinion zone in his hockey game ecosystem. “This symbol represents the InfoZone opinion because different coaches have different opinions on how to run the team, just like how opinion writers have different opinions on other topics.”
• For Emily McMahon, a visit to the snack bar describes the purpose of advertising in her basketball game ecosystem. “During halftime people usually go to get snacks, and when you go to get snacks, they try to sell you other stuff than what you want.”
• Whatever their systems, the students show a clear grasp of all zones and understand the dangers of misinformation. Sierra Jones’ solar system provides a powerful example. “My symbol for misinformation is a black hole. A black hole messes up the universe, and misinformation can mess up much more.” And Douw O’Kelly’s cheeseburger-based description of misinformation works by appealing to the senses. “The symbol I chose for misinformation is the onions, as it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It also makes your eyes watery and your nose runny, the same way misinformation leaves a bad taste and gives you a blurry vision of the world around us.”

Watch a video compilation of all student work here. You can find topics inspired by Rosen’s “InfoZones” project on NLP’s Flipgrid partner page. Just pick a topic like “Zone experiment” or “Information ecosystems”

Accomplishing the learning objective

Combining Checkology lessons with the creativity of designing posters and making videos kept Rosen’s class highly engaged. “They connected the material to their own lives, realizing how much time they spend clicking on and seeing so much information every single day,” he said. “They also enjoyed merging the digital world of Flipgrid with creating a more traditional poster board with their hands.”

Students also gained insights into their own information consumption habits as they tracked their “InfoZones” usage. “They were genuinely surprised by how much entertainment they were viewing every day. And many of them acknowledged that they should spend more time on other ‘InfoZones,’ like news,” Rosen noted.

He said this project provides a multifaceted and meaningful way for students to grasp the topic. “I want my students to be able to distinguish the types of information they see, read, and scroll through every day, and this assignment is a tool to accomplish that objective.”

2021 marked another year of rapidly spreading misinformation following breaking news events, from the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to the Biden presidency. Get ready for 2022 by reviewing our news literacy takeaways from the past 12 months. You’ll be prepared to recognize and debunk falsehoods, conspiracy theories and hoaxes in 2022, and know what information to trust, share and act on.

1. Science misinformation

   No, vaccines don’t magnetize you, increase the risk of infertility, contain tracking devices, or cause cancer and HIV. But misinformation surrounding vaccines — along with other science-based topics like climate change — continued to deluge social media feeds throughout the year.

   News literacy takeaway: Turn to credible, authoritative sources to confirm or debunk science-related content, such as NLP’s COVID-19 resources page or reputable institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And know that bad actors will even resort to cute cat videos as “engagement bait” to draw you to their sites and spread falsehoods.

2. Protests and crowds

   Photos supposedly showing large crowds protesting or supporting controversial issues appeared frequently through the year in misleading ways. For example, this photo does not show a large crowd gathering in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before a demonstration to support former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election ended in riots. Instead, it shows people participating in the “March for Our Lives” gun control demonstration in 2018. A photo of mass demonstrations in Moscow in 1991 circulated online as “evidence” of large crowds protesting COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates in Austria in November 2021.

   New literacy takeaway: Using photos of large crowds in false contexts is a common disinformation tactic used to exaggerate the level of support for a cause. Do a reverse image search to help you find the original context of a photo.

3. Jan. 6 rumors

   The attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 resulted in a stream of misleading social media posts, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories that began immediately after the riots and continued throughout the year. A fabricated tweet in October that was attributed to Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene circulated online days after social media “sleuths” hatched a baseless conspiracy theory that she was the Capitol pipe bomber.

   News literacy takeaway: Conspiracy theorists often engage in motivated reasoning and confirmation bias to manufacture “evidence” for their beliefs. When you encounter a far-fetched or controversial claim, check to see if major fact-checking organizations have debunked it. Or go a step further and do your own research by practicing some basic digital verification skills, like reverse image search, lateral reading and other techniques that fact-checkers use to identify doctored images.

4. Biden Presidency and QAnon

   QAnon followers continually promoted false claims that Former President Donald Trump actually won the election and President Joe Biden is either posing as president or is being played by a body double until Trump returns to power. In March, false claims spread on social media that video of Biden speaking to reporters at the White House was staged or manipulated using a green screen or computer-generated imagery.

   News literacy takeaway: Be aware that false claims about staged political events are often connected to dangerous and baseless QAnon beliefs. Find videos and posts that debunk the claims through a basic Google search.

5. Misleading gas prices

   Misleading photos of unusually high gas prices have been used to try to score cheap partisan points online for years, and 2021 was no exception — particularly as prices rose from historic lows during the pandemic. A November photo from a station in Lancaster, California, displayed premium fuel costing nearly $9 per gallon. But the photo was taken out of context and did not reflect actual prices at the time. Other false and misleading examples can be found here, here and here.

6. Empty supermarket shelves

   Supply chain problems in the news sparked numerous misleading social media posts, photos and videos, exaggerating the problem or falsely assigning blame. Posts featuring photos of empty supermarket shelves claimed that President Biden’s policies were responsible for food shortages. But the photos were used in false contexts. Some were taken in Australia and England. A photo of empty shelves in South Carolina was from 2018.

   News literacy takeaway: Viral rumors presenting photos of empty store shelves are common during disasters and other events that cause disruptions in the supply chain. Be wary of such photos and seek out trusted, standards-based news sources for accurate coverage of supply chain issues.

7. Staged skits out of context

   Faked scenarios tied to real events and aimed at building followers on TikTok and other platforms continued as a trend. A video from November that appeared to capture a conflict among crew members on a commercial flight and a passenger demanding a seat change after another passenger refused to show proof of vaccination was actually staged for a short film.

   News literacy takeaway: This film was produced by a social media influencer with a history of creating films designed to go viral. Such videos often are published without disclosures that they’ve been staged. These videos can seem authentic at first because there are genuine cellphone videos of fights over COVID-19 rules on planes. Search online to see if a video has been debunked; the fact-checking site HoaxEye found selfies posted by the film’s creators.

8. Vaccine harm claims

   Each development in the COVID-19 vaccines rollout — from approval by the Food and Drug Administration, to private company mandates, to the inclusion of shots for children — has sparked viral rumors. As the year began, celebrity deaths, like that of baseball icon and civil rights activist Hank Aaron, also were immediately and falsely tied to vaccines. Rather, Aaron died of natural causes at the age of 86 on Jan. 22.

   In November, a photo of a vaccination clinic in Foxborough, Massachusetts, was digitally altered to push an anti-vaccine narrative. Text in a sign in the photo said that COVID-19 vaccines were available without an appointment — but was changed to read “Don’t forget to donate your childrens (cq) organs.”

   News literacy takeaway: Many claims of vaccine harm involve sheer assertion and false context. Text on signs, for example, is easy to alter with photo manipulation software and is a common target of bad actors online. Check credible sources regarding the accuracy of any claims regarding vaccine harm, including those that tie deaths or injuries to vaccines. See our lateral reading guide for more tips.

9. Celebrity t-shirts

   Doctored images of celebrities wearing t-shirts with provocative slogans were shared widely … again. This post featured George Clooney with a shirt that compared MAGA supporters to Confederates and Nazis. Another showed Captain America actor Chris Evans wearing an anti-Trump shirt. But in both cases the political messages had been digitally added, and the original photo of Clooney was taken in 2015.

   News literacy takeaway: Printed messages, including those on t-shirts, are particularly easy to alter and should always be approached with skepticism — especially when they spark a strong emotion or confirm your biases. Also, many of the provocative t-shirt designs that have been digitally added to celebrity photos were created for profit and sold online.

10. Outrage bait

    Posts and tweets designed to evoke strong emotional reactions remained a fixture on social media. A tweet took a statement from Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis about COVID-19 vaccine mandates out of context to falsely push the claim that Florida schools will no longer require any vaccinations, even for polio, measles and mumps. Critics of vaccine mandates seized on the cancellation of thousands of Southwest Airlines flights in early October to spread baseless rumors that the service disruptions were due to pilots and crews refusing to work to protest the policy.

    News literacy takeaway: Outrage and anger drive engagement on social media. Users casually scrolling through their feeds may react without pausing long enough to figure out a tweet like this was inaccurate, especially if they have strong feelings about the topic. DeSantis said only that there would be no mandate for children to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The Southwest cancellations were due to air traffic control issues and bad weather. Follow our “Sanitize before you share” infographic to help you avoid unintentionally spreading misinformation.

By John Silva

Mom’s cranberry sauce. Cousin Chris’s pumpkin pie. Uncle Frank’s insistence that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous. Alas, the menu is set for another Thanksgiving dinner sure to cause indigestion. But wait! It doesn’t have to be that way. This year you can doctor the recipe for unrest by adding a crucial ingredient: facts.

If that sounds too good to be true, you are right. Pushing facts on relatives who have strong beliefs on an issue is unlikely to change their minds. The reality is that you can’t use facts and logic to change someone’s belief if it is based on misinformation and emotional reasoning. In fact, it might only deepen their conviction and turn a warm family sit-down into a frosty stalemate. The secret to success lies in knowing how and when to push back and with what information.

This year, try the PEP method if the conversation turns to wild and unproven conspiracy theories. PEP stands for patience, empathy and persistence – all of which are needed to help a conspiracy believer find their way back to the facts and reality.

We start with patience because your loved one probably didn’t become a conspiracist overnight. They likely got sucked into a rabbit hole while looking for legitimate information about the vaccines, but instead found themselves being served up misleading material. You can thank social media algorithms — a technical device that calculates what you are most likely to engage with and prioritizes it in your feed. For example, YouTube’s algorithms too often recommend, “harmful, debunked and inappropriate content,” according to a recent report by the Mozilla Foundation. As people go deeper into these conspiracies, it gets harder and harder to pull them out. So be prepared to listen to, and even be frustrated by, the answers they give when they share their sources. But don’t let those emotions stop you from trying to help.

Next, you should empathize with your friend or family member. Misinformation manipulates people’s emotions and when they fall into conspiratorial thinking, it’s often because they were trying to resolve an issue that was making them anxious. They are often drawn into online communities or social media groups that continually reinforce their belief and bring comfort in a shared identity. Once you step into Uncle Frank’s shoes, it might be easier to see why he dug into conspiratorial beliefs.

Persistence will take some time, but a steady dialogue is the best way to keep facts at the center of the conversation. Don’t reject the information your loved one shares out of hand. Instead, express your skepticism and provide a more reputable source. Make it conversational and anecdotal. Find out why they trust their source and focus on exchanging ideas, beliefs and information that match your common values. Don’t pester Uncle Frank into a fight. Instead, remember that you’re having this discussion out of love and respect for a family member, and not to deride or mock them. This step may not pay fast dividends, but it will set you up for future dialogue with your uncle because you’ve taken the time to build trust.

If he continues to push false information, don’t give up. You can still try to nudge him by talking about what you have read and learned. For example:

• If he pulls up a meme on his phone stating that combined doses of COVID-19 vaccines have never been tested for safety, talk about how you looked up the claim on fact-checking sites such as Snopes or Politifact, which helped reassure you they are safe, and offer to show him how they’ve debunked this meme.
• If Uncle Frank argues that the post must be credible because social media companies would never allow false health information to be shared, you can point to recent efforts by Facebook, Pinterest and other platforms to combat vaccine misinformation because they have allowed the sharing and amplification of so much false content for so long.
• If he shows you an image of a child supposedly harmed by vaccines, express your own skepticism and show him how you use digital verification tools like Google’s reverse image search to reveal the actual source, context and validity of a photo.
• Tell a story about how you verified something for yourself through “lateral reading” – looking at reporting on the issue across several different sources.

By the time everyone moves into the living room to watch football, you will have a better understanding of what caused Uncle Frank to go down a vaccine rabbit hole and you will have  empowered him to confidently examine the credibility of information he encounters. You may even bring him back to a fact-based reality.

Thanksgiving is not a holiday we should dread because of polarizing beliefs. Instead, we should enjoy our time together and learn how to avoid information indigestion by using the PEP method and giving thanks that facts can lead the way.

John Silva is the senior director of professional learning at the News Literacy Project and a National Board Certified teacher. 

After a successful launch in October 2020, NLP is expanding its News Literacy Ambassador Program, extending our reach and strengthening our progress toward embedding news literacy in the American education system.

“Through a rigorous process of identifying educators in key states across the country, we’re pleased to announce this incredible group of news literacy advocates who are leading the charge to ensure that students are well-informed and engaged civic participants in their communities,” said Ebonee Rice, senior vice president, educator network.

Ambassadors work at the grassroots level in their communities, organizing colleagues and allies to help push back against misinformation and advocate for news literacy. Meet our new ambassadors below and learn more about all of them in NewsLit Nation.

Deborah Domingues-Murphy

After her children left for college, Domingues-Murphy went back to school to earn a teaching degree, becoming certified as a business and technology teacher and a library media specialist. Originally from Southern California, she lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has been teaching at City Charter High School in downtown Pittsburgh for 12 years. Because her school does not have a library, she teaches a four-year information literacy curriculum, working with students from the time they enter ninth grade through graduation. She teaches them to evaluate the reliability of sources and how to responsibly use those sources and the information they provide. They also write literature reviews, apply their research to a local topic and present their findings to a panel of community members. When not teaching, Domingues-Murphy likes to travel, read and cook. 

Amanda Escheman

A native of Colorado, Escheman teaches 9th grade geography at Abraham Lincoln High School in Denver. She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a minor in religion from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2019, she received her master’s degree in education and human development from the University of Colorado at Denver and began her career as an English and social studies teacher. Her desire to become a teacher is rooted in her experiences as a speech and debate competitor in high school. Escheman believes news literacy can be a tool for transformation and social change and must be prioritized to democratize online spaces and encourage civic participation. Escheman is a member of the One Colorado LGBTQ+ network and regularly advocates for more inclusive space in public schools. She has served as an equity and diversity liaison and member of the LGBTQ+ employee workgroup and on the Community Diversity Advisory Council.

Jill Hofmockel

Hofmockel brings more than 20 years of experience in school libraries to her position as the teacher-librarian at West High School in Iowa City, Iowa. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in library and information science. A longtime member of the Iowa Association of School Librarians, Hofmockel has served as a committee chair, board member and president, as well as a liaison to the American Association of School Librarians Affiliate Assembly. She is committed to incorporating information literacy skills throughout the school’s curriculum, with a special emphasis on news literacy. Outside of the classroom, Hofmockel coaches her son’s high school esports team and enjoys sharing a cup of tea with her daughter.

Debbie Keen

Keen is a high school teacher at the Career and Technical Education Center in Frisco, Texas, specializing in courses for students interested in pursuing careers in law or public service. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and promotes civics education in classrooms across the country. Keen has presented teacher workshops to such groups as the State Bar of Texas Law-Related Education, the American Board of Trial Advocates and The Center for American and International Law. In 2018, Keen founded the Youth Safety and Civility Alliance to promote civil discourse and conflict resolution strategies for young people. The American Lawyers Alliance selected her for a 2020 Teacher of the Year Award. In her free time, she enjoys traveling and learning alongside other creative teachers.

Molly June Roquet

Head librarian at Redwood Day, an independent K-8 school in Oakland, California, Roquet has been a middle school history teacher and a public librarian. She has a bachelor’s degree in history from San Francisco State University and a master’s degree in library and information science from Wayne State University. Roquet has presented at the American Library Association and California Library Association annual conferences and has written for the publications Computers in Libraries and Information Today. Roquet is excited about the opportunity to collaborate with others as an NLP ambassador.

This week, we’re releasing our annual report for fiscal year 2021 (July 2020-June 2021). It’s a summary of our many accomplishments working in classrooms, with new partners, and for the public. We found creative ways to fulfill our mission and make substantial progress toward a future founded on facts. Many challenges remain ahead, but with your continued support, we can make our vision of a news-literate next generation a reality.

Read the report here.

By Greg McCaffery and Alan C. Miller

Current events continue to underscore that news literacy education is essential for the future of a healthy democracy.

For too many, trust in institutions, including the media, has ruptured. They no longer find facts convincing; feelings hold sway, and conspiratorial thinking has moved into the mainstream. The voting rights of all our citizens and the sanctity of our election system face ongoing threats. We’ve seen renewed evidence of the role of Facebook and other social media platforms in exacerbating political polarization and extremism. We are enduring a stress test of our democracy that has continued throughout the pandemic, the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

We recognized in early 2020 that misinformation poses such an existential threat to our democracy that we needed to extend our reach beyond students to all generations. We developed new resources for the public and launched a comprehensive campaign to combat election misinformation during the 2020 election, including a series of public service announcements in English and Spanish. We also hosted the inaugural season of our podcast, Is that a fact?, which explored the question, “How can American democracy survive and thrive in our toxic information environment?”

At the same time, we made great progress on the education front. During the 2020-21 school year, we reached more students and educators than at any other point in NLP’s history, with over 108,000 students active on Checkology® and more than 13,000 educators across the country using our resources. We enhanced our support of educators by creating additional professional learning opportunities and opening our virtual NewsLitCamp® events to participants nationwide. We also launched NewsLit Nation, our 48,000-plus member network for educators, and our News Literacy Ambassador Program, which supports grassroots community organizing efforts for news literacy education.

You helped make all this progress possible. We hope that as you read this annual report, you’ll take pride in these accomplishments.

But we still have much work to do.

The country is deeply divided along partisan lines and separated into media echo chambers. News literacy education is one key to bridging this divide. We all need the skills to know what news and information to trust, share and act on. Our democracy depends on our collective engagement in the pursuit of a fact-based future.

Thank you for joining us in our fight for a future founded on facts.

Eryn Busch
Washington, D.C.

This is part of a series that introduces you to the people behind the scenes at the News Literacy Project.

1. Can you tell us a little about your background and what brought you to NLP?

In sixth grade, my principal brought various speakers in to inspire us to think about our future careers, what we wanted to contribute to society and why we should already be worried about the value of compound interest. The most compelling of the speakers was a man named Faustin Uzabakiliho, who spoke to us about his escape from the Rwandan genocide and his subsequent work as an evangelist. I’ll never forget him telling us that, most likely, the job we were going to have someday had not even been invented yet, and neither had the company we’d be working for. He encouraged us to dream big, generalize and never pass up an opportunity to serve. So, I took his advice. I joined the Army after high school and took a circuitous route through all manner of adventures and failures to what has been a very fulfilling four years at NLP. I’ve also dabbled in phlebotomy, private security for a royal family, gun sales and voice acting.

 

2. How (if so) has working for NLP impacted your life or changed your world perspective?

My pre-internet upbringing in the foothills of Los Angeles was far removed from a lot of the painful realities of how the American experience has not offered equal opportunity for everyone. But in 2019, we as a staff had the opportunity to travel to Montgomery, Alabama, to tour the Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (projects of the Equal Justice Initiative). My words can’t do the experience justice, but I think of that trip as the beginning of my reeducation. Every single day I think about that trip and what I learned. I now quietly seek out literature, creators and nonprofits that build on that experience, and I plan to take my daughter when she’s old enough to see it for her own eyes.

3. You served in Iraq as a Civil Affairs Sergeant with the U.S. Army during a surge in operations, and back home, as an assistant to senior White House officials. Have those experiences impacted how you approach your work at NLP and your life?

Well, I’m still very tired from those adventures, I’ll say that. But I’m also very fulfilled because working at NLP is a natural extension of working in public service. A couple years before joining NLP, my life was turned upside down overnight by a conspiracy theory. People online picked apart as much of my life as they could, including my military service and my time at the White House, concocting stories about me from the wildly fantastical to the truly dark and traitorous. They almost made me feel that my service was forfeited. I had to change my phone number and then my name, and there were regular attempts to steal my old identity. My family and I seriously considered moving, and my heartbeat would quicken when I would see an unexpected package on my stoop (and admittedly, this still happens). So, when I saw that NLP was hiring for my exact skill set, I jumped at the chance to join the fight for facts because I have been on the other side of misinformation, and I’ve seen how it can do permanent damage. Working at NLP gives me a sense that I’m helping prevent this from happening to others. As with my work in the Army and at the White House, doing the right thing or preventing the wrong thing from happening doesn’t usually make the headlines. That’s hard to remember every time we see a headline about the damage misinformation does, but there won’t be a headline for the chaos our work is preventing, nor for the lives I truly believe we are saving.

4. What is the most surprising thing you have learned or experienced since joining NLP?

My colleagues’ epic karaoke choices aside, I’d say it has been fascinating to watch NLP grow and walk the fine line between nonprofit and ed tech startup. I remember being very intrigued by that during the interview process. When I explain to friends and family what we do and what we offer, I love watching their faces light up. I think a lot of people still feel powerless in the face of misinformation and our work gives them real hope —even better than hope.  It gives them a way they can act.

5. What news literacy tip, tool or guidance do you most often use?

I am admittedly a compulsive reverse image searcher! I didn’t even know all the ways to do it quickly and easily until I saw our tutorial on it this past summer.

6. What did you miss most during the COVID-19 shutdowns?

At one point I would have said concerts and live music, but what I truly miss most is seeing my astoundingly brilliant colleagues in action and supporting their professional development presentations and NewsLitCamps when they come to D.C. I miss watching educators’ faces light up and hearing their audible gasps when they are taught a concept or tool to help them help their students navigate what many thought was a hopeless information wasteland. They leave our events empowered. I know they still do, but I miss seeing that and celebrating it together.

7. Aside from fighting for facts, what else are you passionate about?

I’ve been a songwriter for 21 years, and joining NLP gave me more work/life balance to focus on my craft every day, which in turn gave me the confidence to start performing. So many supportive colleagues came to my shows around the D.C. area. A highlight of my life was getting invited to perform in the round at The Bluebird Café in Nashville (the songwriters all sit in a circle facing each other with the audience around them). I retired from performing in January 2020, and since then I’ve contented myself with making music in my basement studio and taking on voiceover work occasionally. Most recently, I voiced the text and arranged the music for an audiobook of poetry coming out on Audible this December.

8. Are you on team dog, team cat, team wombat? Or do you prefer stuffed animals to pets? (If you have a pet, please consider sharing a photo.)

Can I be team everything? I’m team everything (except spiders). My daughter and I adore snakes and would love to get a ball python to join our cat and dog, but so far, we’ve been outvoted by my husband and mother. I grew up in apartments, which forced me to be a cat person, but now I finally have a friendly dog who loves to hang out with other NLP dogs (see picture). One of my favorite moments at NLP was when my colleague Miriam adopted our foster dog, Reign, a mere week before we shut down for the pandemic.

(Picture: Gus and Ebonee’s dog Psalm, 2021)

9. What one item do you always have in your refrigerator?

Peanut butter.

10. What’s in your pocket/backpack/laptop case right now?

I don’t go anywhere without my daily planner/journal that I custom-made over the course of the pandemic. I got tired of hunting for the perfect planner and just created it in Microsoft Word. It took three months to finish, but it was worth it to have something that helps me keep my own life together. My daughter and I were recently both diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety within a few months of each other, so we’ve been learning together about the tools and tricks available to help people like us function in the world.

As part of Illinois Public Media’s special week of coverage, “Who’s in charge of the news,” Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, helped to empower listeners of The 21^st Show with ways to distinguish fact from fiction in the news.

The segment, How can you tell if the news you read is real?, featured Adams along with Stephanie Craft, head of the journalism department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Michael Spikes, a Ph.D. student in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University.

When asked how to know if a post, meme, or GIF on social media was fact-based and okay to share, Adams said, “When it comes to sharing posts about civic matters, like politics or social issues, it’s best to make sure that what you’re sharing is accurate. If there’s a link to another source involved, make sure it’s a standards-based source that has processes of verification in place and strives to be as fair and accurate as possible in the information it produces. I would add that lots of people, including people who we love and generally trust in our lives, share or reshare false claims. Sometimes these are just statements, what we call, ‘sheer assertions,’ with no evidence at all. But sometimes these kinds of baseless claims can take other forms. So, a photo without attribution or context, or a screenshot of a headline with no link, or a meme.”

To listen in full, click here. (Adams is quoted at the 7:40 and 16:00 minute marks.)

The periodic table of elements provides a systematic structure that can be used to predict the properties of elements, including the ability to form compounds and drive chemical reactions. It brings organization and reliability to the chemical landscape.

Unfortunately, there is no periodic table of information. That leaves us with an information landscape that is anything but organized, with an abundance of misinformation — the element that can spark harmful reactions, and actions.

Chemistry teacher Uriah Albrink witnessed this in his classroom last year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and related misinformation flooded our newsfeeds. Students were misled by false claims, hoaxes and conspiracy theories spread by people and organizations that were far from credible. He knew he had to do something about it.

“With the amount of misinformation being thrown around, I felt it was my responsibility to make them better consumers of information,” said Albrink, who teaches at Mason County High School in Maysville, Kentucky. “We were getting this mindset of polarization [that] science isn’t real. That was a big red flag.”

Engaging students during remote learning

Like schools all over the country, Mason County High closed when the pandemic hit. Albrink needed to find resources that would engage his students and allow them to work independently in a virtual learning environment. He found what he needed in Checkology®, the News Literacy Project’s e-learning platform, and The Sift®, its weekly newsletter for educators.

“This seemed right up my alley, a way to teach good research skills and methodology,” said. Albrink, an educator with 17 years of experience who teaches mainly juniors and sophomores. “I felt it was important.”

Albrink used items featured in The Sift’s Viral Rumor Rundown to teach his students how to avoid being fooled by popular memes and provocative posts. “We’d do reverse image searches, talk through how to spot fake accounts on social media, and to take it all with a grain of salt,” he said.

Using real-life examples to teach foundational concepts of science literacy captured his students’ attention — and surprised them. “They’re just kind of amazed at how much falsehood is out there floating around.”

Making connections with science literacy

Albrink used the Checkology lesson “InfoZones” to help his students get a better grasp of the types of content they were seeing. Students learned how to differentiate among types of information — news, opinion, advertising, entertainment, propaganda and raw information. They tested their skills with examples in Checkology’s interactive Check Center and then independently applied the concepts they learned to news articles, judging credibility and putting information in context.

Their exploration of mask-related myths provided Albrink with an opportunity to connect the news directly to chemistry lessons. He taught them about the size of molecules and how being able to smell odors while wearing a mask does not mean masks are ineffective. These teachable moments from current events resonated. “It’s affecting their lives directly. Otherwise, if they can’t make a connection, it’s hard to engage,” he noted.

Teaching science literacy made him realize that kids often don’t have the essential skills to discern good information from bad and were being taken advantage of by those who create and share falsehoods. “Hopefully, I opened their eyes to be leery of what people say. If I  can provide a layer of insulation, I feel like I succeeded with them.”

Albrink wishes that he had encountered news literacy resources and applied them to his science classes sooner. Now that he has, he will continue to weave science literacy into his classroom lessons. “To progress as a professional, I think this is the direction I want to go,” he said.

The News Literacy Project is pleased to announce a new partnership with The Juice, a unique learning program created to help students develop media literacy, reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.

“When considering partners to align with, The Juice just made sense,” said Ebonee Rice, NLP’s senior vice president of the educator network. “They uphold a high bar for helping educators source content to teach the specialized pedagogical methods specific to the process of news literacy and critical thinking. We are excited to see how this platform enhances our network’s ability to positively impact news literacy education.”

Through this partnership, members of NLP’s national educator network, NewsLit Nation, can use the resources of this current events-focused learning platform free during this school year and at a reduced price thereafter. (Educators who have not yet joined NewsLit Nation can easily register now.)

Educators can apply Checkology® virtual classroom lessons or NLP’s other educator resources and use them with The Juice, which is designed specifically for educators and students in grades 5-12. The learning platform’s newsletter, The Daily Juice, is created by journalists, educators and assessment experts. The Daily Juice enables students to quickly read a few of the most interesting news stories of the day. These include narratives of positive human accomplishments, vocabulary builders and STEM concepts. An assessment question follows each story, and teachers receive real-time diagnostic data about student performance that highlights standards mastery and accountability.

Each story is published at four different competency levels, so students have access to the same information regardless of their reading level. This provides an opportunity for inclusive classroom conversations around the same topics.

Follow this special link to sign up for a no-obligation trial.

 About The Juice

The company comprises experienced educators, journalists and technologists committed to making students better critical thinkers, communicators and citizens by equipping them with the tools to thrive in the 21st century. The Juice is a “plug-and-play solution” that aims to make educators’ lives easier and empower educators to make informed, data-driven learning decisions.

 

In 2020, she was a guest on NLP’s podcast, Is that a fact?

The News Literacy Project (NLP) offers its congratulations to 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winners Maria Ressa, the founder of the media company, Rappler, who has fearlessly confronted violent authoritarian rule in the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov, a founder of of Russia’s independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which provides fact-based reporting on controversial topics other Russian media rarely cover.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is honoring Ressa and Muratov “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” In announcing the prize, the committee recognized “their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia. At the same time, they are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”

“Ressa and Muratov exemplify the vital role that journalists are playing throughout the world in holding the powerful accountable in the face of serious risks to their own freedom and safety,” said Alan Miller, the founder and CEO of NLP. “We applaud the Nobel committee for recognizing these profiles in journalistic courage.”

Speaks with NLP about journalism and authoritarian rule

In 2020, Ressa addressed the question “Can journalism survive an authoritarian ruler?” as a guest on NLP’s new podcast Is that a fact? During that interview, she spoke about how social media feeds narrow our view of the world and give legitimacy to falsehoods, propaganda and conspiracy theories.

“This is how you create alternate realities,” she said. “That’s the world we live in today… it’s important that we really understand that social media has changed the information ecosystem globally. What it’s done now is that it’s become part of the dictator’s playbook because a lie told a million times can become a fact.

“And with micro-targeting, it takes our most vulnerable moment to a message and sells it to the highest bidder, whether that is a government or whether that’s a company, anyone who pays for it, right? And that is alarming to me because journalists can’t even do our jobs if we all don’t agree on facts. If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. If you don’t have truth, you can’t have trust. Without any of these three things, you can’t have democracy.’

Listen to the full interview.

Criticism of Facebook

Ressa has been a vocal critic of Facebook, which the administration of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has used as a powerful propaganda tool. “Facebook is now the world’s largest distributor of news and yet it has refused to be the gatekeeper. And when it does that, when you allow lies to actually get on the same playing field as facts, it taints the entire public sphere,” she said in a 2019 interview with The New York Times.

She continues to uphold the highest standards of journalism and push back against Duterte’s regime, despite being arrested and jailed and becoming the target of multiple death threats. Ressa has personally experienced how hard it is for journalists to hold the line against an authoritarian leader when press freedoms are threatened.

For decades, Muratov has fought for freedom of speech and professional ethics and standards of journalism under worsening conditions, harassment, threats and violence. Six journalists at Novaya Gazeta have been killed since its founding nearly three decades ago.

Alan C. Miller, News Literacy Project founder and CEO, is a winner of AARP’s prestigious Purpose Prize^®,  a national award that celebrates people 50 and older who are using their life experience and wisdom to tackle societal challenges and inspire others.

“AARP is honored to celebrate these extraordinary older adults, who have dedicated their lives to serving others in creative and innovative ways,” AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said. “During these trying times in our country and globally, we are inspired to see people use their life experiences to build a better future for us all.”

AARP awards $50,000 to each honoree’s organization and provides technical assistance supports and resources to help broaden the impact of its work.

In a profile on AARP’s website Miller describes what motivated him to create NLP, the problem he hopes to solve and what makes NLP’s approach stand out. “I founded the News Literacy Project in 2008, with the belief that knowing how to identify credible news is an essential life skill in an information age — and that this was not being widely taught in schools,” Miller said.

Watch the short video that AARP produced to learn more about Miller and NLP’s impact. Recipients of the Purpose Prize also are eligible for the AARP Inspire Award. The public votes to choose the winner, whose organization receives $10,000. In this video, Miller answers AARP’s three “inspire” questions.

“We realized last year that misinformation is such an existential threat to democracy that we could not limit ourselves to reaching just the next generation. We are racing against a toxic tide of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories that is undermining our trust in institutions,” Miller said. “We must find a way to bridge this divide by creating a shared narrative around verified, agreed-upon facts.

A sense of purpose

“One of the things that distinguishes NLP is our focus on news literacy, which is a subset of media literacy,” he explained. NLP uses the standards of quality journalism as an aspirational yardstick against which to measure all news and information, partners with journalists who share their skills, provides an understanding of how quality journalism works and instills an appreciation of the First Amendment and the role of a free press in our society.

“We don’t teach people what to think; we teach people how to think. We help them develop critical thinking skills to make judgments about whatever they encounter in the information landscape.”

He also shared his advice for others who want to make a difference in the world. “Start with something for which you have a passion and a sense of purpose. For me, journalism was always a calling, not just a career. In NLP, I feel blessed to have found a second professional calling.”

Read about this year’s other Purpose Prize winners, as well as Honorary Award recipient actor Michael J. Fox, selected for his advocacy work to help advance scientific progress toward a cure for Parkinson’s disease.

Andrea Lin
Washington, D.C.

This is part of a series that introduces you to the people behind the scenes at the News Literacy Project.

1. Can you tell us a little about your background and what brought you to NLP?

How I joined NLP has often felt like a stroke of luck! I studied public relations and graphic design in college, and after graduating, I knew I wanted to explore opportunities that would allow me to contribute to my passions in design, journalism, and youth development. For a bit, I felt torn on what direction to follow, like I had to make a choice on one or the other. When my previous managing editor forwarded me the visual designer opening at NLP, I couldn’t believe how perfectly this position matched the intersections of the ways in which I wanted to make a difference in the world.

2. While studying at American University, you were editor-in-chief of a student magazine and co-chair of the university’s Student Media Board, which comprised 10 publications. Did you confront issues related to news literacy in that work, or have you been able to look back on those positions through a news literacy lens?

I think American University is a very well-read bubble, evident in the number of students active in media organizations and the multitude of professional opportunities given for networking and internships. It was exciting to be able to learn and collaborate with classmates and professors who were all very invested in the mission of quality journalism and meaningful storytelling. I was an undergrad between 2014 and 2017, and I think one of the more prevalent conversations was one that was also happening across other college campuses at the time: the role of a journalist and the standards of objectivity when they come up against current social movements. We had ongoing conversations about distinguishing the ethics and role of op-eds, freedom of speech and what it means to represent critical perspectives.

Looking back now, learning to navigate these issues as they played out across the country was an invaluable way for us to really see the immediate and pressing consequences of news literacy on civic engagement. I think that same ethos is also how Checkology® and NLP have found such a winning formula in how they approach news literacy education, tying these concepts to real-world current issues with real impacts on our everyday lives.

3. What is the most surprising thing you have learned or experienced since joining NLP?

I used to believe plainly that having more information and more access to news sources was always a “good” thing and meant it was easier for more people to stay informed. Early on when I joined NLP, I was surprised to have this belief challenged, although it feels very obvious now. More access and more information alone does not lead to more informed decisions — they have to be accompanied by critical thinking skills and the ability to sift and evaluate what is worth consuming. I think about this NLP tip about an abundance of information and how true it has been with the spread of COVID-19 misinformation.

4. What news literacy tip, tool or guidance do you most often use?

I love digital verification tools that help me fact-check shared images or videos on social media. As easy as it is these days to manipulate images, there are also so many neat resources online that are free and accessible that we can use to investigate digital media ourselves. Both in my work and in my personal life, it’s been super useful to know what kind of visual clues to look for in a photo and how to do a reverse image-search or using Google Maps.

5. Aside from fighting for facts, what else are you passionate about?

In my spare time, I volunteer annually for a weeklong Taiwanese American youth summer conference in the Midwest. We foster personal growth and leadership skills with our campers from grades one through 12. I love getting to see our young campers challenge themselves and grow so much in just one week. Being with my community is very grounding, and it fills my heart every year to see how much these children care about the world around them. They are constantly impressing me and surprising me with what they accomplish. Folks love to underestimate children all the time, but I see for myself how individuals can thrive when you show them that you believe in them.

6. Are you on team dog, team cat, team wombat? Or do you prefer stuffed animals to pets? (If you have a pet, please consider sharing a photo.)

I am a big fan of all furry pets, and I will always stop to admire a cutie when they pass on the street, but I am unquestionably Team Cat.

7. What one item do you always have in your refrigerator?

I get made fun of for this all the time, but I genuinely just enjoy the taste of V8 and tomato juice. When I’m feeling particularly wild, I’ll indulge with the spicy hot version of V8.

At NLP, we know that our programs and resources work — our metrics tell us so. But statistics don’t show the personal impact of news literacy education, and we find those stories inspiring.

That’s why we recently checked in with Valeria Luquin. We met her in 2019 when she was a freshman at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Van Nuys, California. Journalism teacher Adriana Chavira introduced Luquin and her classmates to news literacy using NLP’s Checkology^® virtual classroom when they were ninth graders. Valeria quickly grasped the concepts and applied what she learned to her daily life. She did so well we named her our Gwen Ifill Student of the Year! In this video she talks about helping family and friends become more news-literate and acting as a good role model for her younger sister.

Today, Luquin is a high school senior and news magazine editor-in-chief at her school’s student-run news website, The Pearl Post.  She also represents the student body as its vice president. “I look back on who I was freshman year [and] I notice a huge growth in myself as a person and as a student journalist,” said Luquin, who is also co-host of the school’s new Room 22 podcast.

Changing with the times

Chavira, who still teaches journalism at the school, tackles the changing trends in how students get their information. “As students increasingly rely more on their news from social media platforms such as TikTok, I’ve put more of an emphasis on asking them where they get their information,” she said. “I’ve always encouraged them to double-check the information to ensure that they are re-posting accurate information, especially in the past year with news of the Jan. 6 insurrection and COVID-19 pandemic.”

The students are changing as readily as the information landscape, Chavira said. “I’ve noticed that my freshmen this year come in with more news literacy skills than in previous years. They already know to double-check the information on social media, especially if it’s only one account reporting certain information.”

That kind of savvy is simply a part of who Luquin now is. “I still find all of the information from Checkology to be useful in my everyday life,” she said. That includes identifying credible sources and having a deep appreciation for the work journalists do to inform the public. “I am still not sure what I would like to major in, but a career in the journalism field is one of my top choices.”

Whatever path she chooses, Luquin credits her involvement with NLP for giving her an advantage early on. “The News Literacy Project opened up a lot of doors for me, especially after I was awarded the Gwen Ifill Student of the Year award. I am grateful for all they have done for me and for the work they continue to do to teach young teenagers about the importance of journalism.”

We’ve just launched the second season of NLP’s Is that a fact? podcast, and this time we are going beyond examining misinformation’s ability to mislead to look at the origins of false narratives and the actual harm they have caused. The new episodes will explore how fictional information  emerges and then bubbles to the surface to misdirect the country’s civic and cultural discourse.

As the 20^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approach, we look back at the untruths and myths that surround that fateful day. One of the core catalysts of 9/11 misinformation was the film Loose Change. Our first guest, Esquire magazine correspondent John McDermott told us, “remains probably the single most popular piece of conspiracy media ever created.” He explains how the film started a movement of conspiracy theorists that planted the seeds for today’s Qanon believers.

The second guest, James Meigs, former Popular Mechanics editor-in-chief, discussed how his team of journalists debunked many of the myths propagated by  Loose Change even before the film came out. “What was really powerful about Loose Change wasn’t the specific claim,” said Meigs. “It was the overall mood of the filmmaking …  It had really cool music. It had all this slow motion. It had this very compelling narration, even if a lot of it didn’t make a lot of sense. It was quite powerful to watch.”

9/11 impact: A personal perspective

Our final guest, Ann Van Hine, whose husband was a firefighter killed the day of the terrorist attacks, explained how she deals with the anniversary in personal terms.  “Everybody has a part of that day. Everybody knows where they were. Everybody has a memory, but you’re actually talking about the day that my daughter’s dad died, the day my husband died. I told my girls early on, if people started saying weird stuff about September 11^th, which happened as time went on, then just blow them out of the water. Just say flat out with no preparation for them, ‘My dad was one of the firefighters killed that day.’ Cause that’ll suck the air out of the room. Not to be mean, but sometimes people need a reality check.”

We hope you’ll listen. Over the rest of the season, we’ll examine false narratives about the misperceptions that Democrats and Republicans have about each other, the Sandy Hook shootings, race relations and more. Please join us every other Wednesday for new episodes of Is that a fact? Listen here or on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Amazon Music and wherever podcasts are available.

In a new piece for CNBC,  journalist Salvador Rodriguez reported that amid the pandemic, quarantines, and homeschooling, “QAnon and anti-vaxxers brainwashed kids stuck at home.” With schools open, “teachers have to deprogram them.”

Rodriguez highlighted the efforts of  Sarah Wildes, a seventh-grade teacher in Alabama who is helping students filter out misinformation and find reliable news sources using lessons from the News Literacy Project’s (NLP) Checkology virtual classroom.  Checkology is an online platform that helps educators teach students how to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources, and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods.

“The pandemic, the election, social justice issues — people are looking for reliable information, and educators need support to navigate the disinformation that’s out there,” said Shaelynn Farnsworth, NLP’s director of educator network expansion. As Wildes’ experience illustrates, Checkology is the perfect resource for this.

To read the full piece, click here.

When you think of a librarian, do you envision that old movie cliché of a timid woman putting a finger to her lips and “shushing” readers? If so, you’ve never met K.C. Boyd, a public-school librarian in Washington, D.C.

Last year, Boyd became one of NLP’s first News Literacy Ambassadors, educators who work in their communities to help bring news literacy education to their schools and create a generation of civically engaged news-literate adults. Boyd is a passionate advocate for her profession, her students and her community.

For example, earlier this month she and her fellow librarians worked to support an amendment to the District of Columbia’s public schools budget to provide $3.25 million for the restoration of full-time librarian positions in 36 schools, many in under-served neighborhoods. That amendment, introduced by District of Columbia Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, was unanimously approved by the District Council in early August. Boyd said the victory was the result of hard work by a coalition of educators, school district leaders and parents. “We’d been fighting for 18 months,” she said. “It was a big lift, and I’m thankful for the unanimity. Now we’re making an extra push to make the positions essential.”

Second generation educator

Boyd’s deep commitment to education runs in the family. Raised in Chicago, both of her parents were science teachers, and her mother later became a computer science teacher. But Boyd, who has been a librarian for 24 years, says she at first resisted her parents’ encouragement to become an educator. After college, she worked in corporate America as a recruiter for a Fortune 500 company. When she began to feel stalled in her position, her father again made his case. “He swooped back in and got me to go back to school for a master’s in library science,” said Boyd, who has been a librarian at the district’s  Jefferson Middle School Academy for five years.

Previously, she served as the Area Library Coordinator for Chicago Public Schools and was a District Coordinator for the Mayor Daley Book Club for Middle School Students. She also was  the lead librarian in East St. Louis, Illinois. She also holds master’s degrees in media communications and education leadership.

‘You’ve got to give them a platform to discover’

Boyd currently serves on the executive board for the District of Columbia Library Association and the Advisory Board for EveryLibrary. She is a member of the American Library Association Chapter Council representing Washington D.C., the American Association of School Librarians Digital Tools and the Washington Teachers’ Union Equity Collaborative.

Over the course of her career, she has seen how technology has changed libraries and the way  people use them but says the essence of her role is largely the same. She continues to help students discover the joys of reading every day, improve their research skills, receive the preparation needed to succeed in high school and grow into upstanding digital citizens. That concept, practicing responsible digital citizenship, is embedded in the media studies course that she teaches.

“I incorporate many different programs in this course. I use current events from The Sift® [NLP’s free weekly newsletter for educators] and apply that to a lesson or activity,” she said. “It challenges their thinking and their place in the world. And they learn a lot. You’ve got to give them that platform to discover.”

Having seen students struggling to discern credible sources and information from a flood of misinformation, Boyd wants to make an impact outside her classroom as an NLP ambassador. After a school year disrupted by the pandemic, she is looking forward to developing a plan to involve educators in D.C., Maryland and Virginia in efforts to promote news literary education and hopes to get organizations that serve educators and librarians on board. When you visit Boyd’s website The Boss Librarian Blog, the passion that makes her an ideal ambassador is evident in the tagline at the top of the page: “Bringing the zeal back to school librarianship.”

With the start of the school year, are you ready to dive into news literacy education? Becoming news-literate helps students learn to better navigate our complex information landscape and avoid spiraling down misinformation rabbit holes. It’s also essential to being civically engaged.

The events of the last 18 months have made it clear just how urgently students need news literacy skills. If you want to help your students discern facts from falsehoods, start with the News Literacy Project (NLP). We’re the leading provider of impactful, relevant and FREE resources and programs for teaching news literacy.

Begin by registering for NLP’s e-learning platform, the Checkology® virtual classroom, where your students will learn to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources, recognize misinformation and help stop its spread. The lessons also help them understand the role of the free press and the First Amendment in our democracy, and they are aligned to the C3 Framework, Common Core State Standards-ELA and to the ISTE standards. Checkology lessons also enhance students’ comprehension across disciplines. And be sure to join NLP’s NewsLit Nation, a national network to engage and mobilize more than 40,000 educators in all 50 states.

Events for the new school year

NLP supports your work throughout the school year, beginning with a variety of events and offerings. Choose the one that works best for you.

• Register for the webinar Getting Started with Checkology. Select from one of three dates: Aug. 19, Aug. 30 or Sept. 15.
• Take part in our Twitter chat on blended learning Aug. 26, from 4 to 5 p.m. ET at #NLPchat.
• Don’t miss our free virtual NewsLitCamp®, a unique professional learning event presented with our news partner, The 19th*, on Aug. 27.
• Teach your students about the dangers of conspiracy theories with the Sept. 2 EdWeb webinar Avoiding the rabbit hole: Teaching concepts in conspiratorial thinking.
• Go deeper with our fall news literacy webinar series, which covers foundational concepts and curriculum integration. The series begins Friday, Sept. 3, at 4 p.m. CT
• Challenge your students to compete in an “InfoZones” lesson contest. Ask your students for examples of information about topics that interest them and we’ll feature the winning content in a new “InfoZones” exercise. The contest closes Oct. 15.

Online resources always available

• Explore the FREE classroom-ready material on our website, including the new infographics, How to teach news literacy in polarizing times and Eight tips to Google like a pro.
• Check out our “News Literacy Foundations” collection on Flipgrid.
• Watch these videos to see how other educators found creative ways to teach news literacy during the challenging 2020-21 school and benefit from their lessons learned.

Throughout the pandemic, when thousands of schools had to rely on distance learning, demand for Checkology surged. Aaron Feldstein, a middle school social studies teacher in California, is one of many educators who told NLP how much they valued our work. “If I were in charge, Checkology would be part of a national mandated curriculum for sure,” Feldstein said.

Whatever this school year brings, you can be sure NLP will be there to continue supporting educators and students avoid misinformation and become more news-literate.

Peter Adams, senior vice president of education, discussed a recent survey examining COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook in an August 4 interview with Chicago’s PBS affiliate, WTTW. 

Adams was asked to weigh in on what social media companies can do to curb the spread of misinformation on their platforms, and why misinformation spreads so quickly across platforms like Facebook.  

When asked how big a role social media plays in allowing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation to spread to  the general public, Adams responded, “You know, the cause and effect is a little tricky here. It might well be that people who are cynical and nihilistic toward mainstream media turn to Facebook. It might be that folks who are not that way to start with seeing messages on Facebook that enflame them and turn them to misinformation. It’s probably both, but what we know for sure is that despite Facebook’s statements saying that they will take down misinformation if they see it, there’s a lot of COVID mis- and disinformation on the platform.” 

View the full segment here. 

By Hannah Covington and Suzannah Gonzales 

While discussing the Derek Chauvin murder trial in the death of George Floyd, a student alerts the class about the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright. On a separate day, another student asks why there was little coverage about a certain aspect of the deadly Atlanta-area shootings. The morning after a grand jury’s September decision in the Breonna Taylor case, a student wants to talk about it. Others bring up national politics.

In a school year of historic upheaval, partisanship and vitriol can easily seep into the classroom when controversial current events come up. Faced with charged students — as well as parents and guardians — some educators may question whether it is worth broaching these difficult topics at all.

But teaching current events through the lens of news literacy can help students engage meaningfully with the headlines they encounter without exacerbating strong emotions or divisions — and also empower them to identify credible news and information. Below are six tips and strategies for teaching news literacy in polarizing times.

1. Approach news reports like other texts

News coverage — like poetry, short stories and other class texts — offers rich opportunities for discussion and analysis. Remind students to approach news stories as they would other texts in class: closely and critically, evaluating each piece of information and any supporting evidence. If a student makes a polarized claim during class or in an assignment, challenge them to support the claim with fact-based evidence.

2. Focus on journalism standards

Center discussions of news articles on the standards of quality journalism, which can help build common ground. Even those who disagree on controversial issues can agree that credible news coverage should incorporate standards, such as fairness, accuracy and transparency.

For instance, asking students to read a news article with credible sources in mind — “Where is information coming from? How many different sources are there? Are any relevant voices or perspectives missing?” — can sharpen the focus of a class conversation and help move students beyond kneejerk reactions to a story topic.

3. Emphasize specifics

Rather than labeling an entire news report as “biased,” students should concentrate on particulars, such as a specific headline, caption or word choice. Pose questions like, “Is this specific element of the story fair and accurate?” or, “If you had to write a headline for this story, what would it be?”

Students, for example, could compare wording in breaking news alerts about the decision in the Breonna Taylor case. Or, they could focus on how news organizations label coverage of major developing stories, such as the deadly Atlanta-area spa shootings.

Focusing the conversation on specific parts of news coverage may help avoid fights over the topic itself.

4. Reflect on personal biases

Students benefit from becoming aware of their own biases as news consumers. Personal backgrounds and life experiences — as well as factors like race, ethnicity and gender — shape how we see the world. Ask students to consider how these biases might affect their perceptions of news reports and opinion pieces.

Following the Atlanta-area shootings, for example, students could read guidance published by the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) for newsrooms reporting on the shootings. Then, they could review news coverage and see how it compares to AAJA’s recommendations, taking note of language choices, context and sources.

5. Consult diverse news sources

Encourage students to explore various points of view by diversifying their media diet and turning to credible news sources that take journalism standards and ethics seriously. It’s easy to fall into partisan news bubbles, especially on social media. Challenge them to seek out multiple sources and perspectives — not just the ones they typically consult and agree with or that confirm their existing views. Being open to opposing viewpoints can help combat polarization.

Coverage comparisons, including headlines, work especially well: How did different news organizations cover this same topic? What similarities or differences do you notice?

One way to discuss the Chauvin case, for instance, could involve comparing coverage from local, national and international news organizations.

6. Remember learning outcomes

News literacy can give students practice using critical reading and observation skills. It aims to teach students how to think — not what to think — about news and other information (including sensitive issues). And with so many recent breaking and controversial news events that affect students and their communities, learning outcomes for news literacy apply well beyond the classroom.

*           *           *

Journalism documents today’s history. The unprecedented events and major news of the last school year have made teaching news literacy more crucial than ever. The current polarized climate may raise concerns over angry students, parents and guardians, but it also can present opportunities for productive dialogue. While recent events and controversies may feel overwhelming to teach, incorporating news literacy alongside a few simple strategies can help address important stories of the moment while making classroom conversations worthwhile.

Hannah Covington is the senior manager of education and content at the News Literacy Project. Suzannah Gonzales is a university adjunct instructor and former director of education and content at the News Literacy Project.

NLP’s app is now heavy on TikTok content! Our game-like app, Informable®, has added a Mix-Up Mode made up entirely of videos from the hugely popular social media video platform. Users are challenged to develop a news-literate mindset — identifying whether a video has credible evidence for a claim or whether it’s an ad or not, for example.

Informable, free on iOS and Android, is for people of all ages. It helps develop key news-literate habits of mind with four brain exercise modes each made up of three levels. The questions become more difficult as a user progresses from level 1 to level 3. The four modes are:

• Checkable or Not? (Is each item fact-based or opinion-based?)
• Evidence or Not? (Does each item provide strong evidence for the claim it makes?)
• Ad or Not? (Is an item advertising or something else — news, opinion, personal endorsement on social media, etc.)?
• News or Opinion? (Is each item news or opinion?)

To advance, players must correctly identify at least seven of the 10 examples presented in each level. Points are awarded for accuracy and speed. Users can review their answers to learn more about each item and see why they were right or wrong.

Once users complete all three levels in all four modes, they reach Mix-Up Mode, which presents random examples from all modes to simulate the information flow they might experience in real life while scrolling a social media app. This is where the new TikTok examples come in.

The first level is generic, while the second focuses on COVID-19 and the third, newest level is made up of 10 TikTok videos. The game is perfect for anyone who uses the platform regularly or someone who doesn’t. It challenges users to use a critical eye to look for things like #Ad and sources with credible information. Users will leave any Informable experience as smarter news consumers, with a more informed view of TikTok and other content they see on social media.

Download Informable today on iOS or Google Play.

 

 

 

 In part one of a two-part series for the Education for Sustainable Democracy podcast, John Silva, NLP’s senior director of education and training, and Miriam Romais, NLP’s senior manager of educator engagement, discussed the importance of news literacy and strategies to help young people become smart news consumers.

“We have the assumption that because students are digital natives, they aren’t digitally naïve,” Romais said. But young people don’t always know how to tell the difference between social media posts that are misleading, and ones that are credible.  “If you’re basing all of your decisions, actions, and emotions on something that is false, how do you move through life? So, we try to get to the point where we help the educators and the general public [with news literacy skills], and educators specifically because they’re going to amplify this to their students.”

Silva, a former educator who taught for 13 years in Chicago Public Schools, said integrating news literacy into the classroom strengthens the overall curriculum. “As a history teacher, as a social studies teacher, we are continually talking about, ‘How do we know what happened? What are the sources we can go to in order to know the who, the why, the where, and the when?’ News literacy  helps provide a different understanding of journalism, because that… is what reporters are doing, they’re telling us what happened – the who, the what, the where, the when. There’s a famous quote, ‘Journalism is the first draft of history,’ and understanding how to evaluate that, in the modern sense, helps to understand history, but it also helps when we’re talking about current events and things that are happening in civics.”

You can listen to all of part one of the podcast here.

How can consumers figure out fact from fiction in the current media landscape? What strategies should they use to know whether the news they are following is credible? John Silva, NLP’s senior director of education and training, shared his expertise on this topic during a recent panel discussion with CT Mirror, a nonprofit news site in Connecticut.

Silva was joined by Marie Shanahan, associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, and Izaskun “Sassy” Larrañeta, managing editor of The Day of New London. CT Mirror presented the June 29 event in partnership with the Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut.

Silva explained that false context is one of the most frequent types of misinformation consumers face.

“One really common example is how often people will take a fake screenshot from a satirical article and post it as if it’s a real screenshot,” Silva said. “There was an example from the Babylon Bee, where they had a fake CNN screenshot and it was taken out of the satirical context, published as if it was a real CNN screenshot, and that created this false context and misinformation.”

Silva said NLP tries to teach consumers to dig deeper when they come across content that creates a strong emotional reaction.  “You have to look at who’s posting it, where it’s from,” Silva said. It’s easy, he said, for someone to take a snippet of a longer video or an excerpt of a quote, or even to alter a caption for an image, and present it in a misleading way. That’s why understanding the context behind a post is so important.

You can watch the panel discussion here.

This is part of a series that introduces you to the people of NLP.

Miriam Romais
Saratoga Springs, New York

This is part of a series that introduces you to the people behind the scenes at the News Literacy Project.

1. Can you tell us a little about your background and what brought you to NLP?
My background is in documentary photography. I was given a camera in high school, and visual storytelling has been my focus ever since. After college, I freelanced as a photojournalist for local papers in New Jersey but soon realized it didn’t completely match my interests. I wanted to spend more time with the people I was photographing and dive into stories that went far beyond the assignment. I wanted to see and learn more than just that single narrative, as we are all multi-layered, complex beings. Although I am first-generation estadosunidense, I credit that curiosity to growing up in Brazil (where my family is from), as it deeply influenced how I see and experience life — how we position ourselves and navigate the world among classes, races, cultures and experiences. Seeing a lack of representation in images we consume is also what led me to become a photo editor/publisher, director and a curator at En Foco, a nonprofit that supports photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander heritage. My own photographic work focuses on creating images that convey the dignity of the person on the other side of the camera, and I see that as a collaborative partnership. I had recently finished my MBA with a concentration in global brand marketing and was exploring ways to bring this knowledge into the nonprofit world when I saw a listing posted by a photojournalist I knew who was then working at NLP. The more I learned about the organization, the more interested I became. And with the encouragement of friend and journalist David Gonzalez of the New York Times, who was a volunteer in NLP’s Newsroom to Classroom program in its early days, I took the plunge.

2. How has working for NLP impacted your life or changed your world perspective?
Reading and interpreting images has allowed me to apply a photo-focus to how I look at various other media. I’ve always been an obsessive note taker, making sure I have the info I need for photo captions. When I heard Nicole Frugé of the San Francisco Chronicle say in a NewsLitCamp a few years ago that “photojournalism IS journalism” — and discuss the importance of captions — I felt seen and validated. Photojournalists are more than picture-makers; they are an integral part in the story being conveyed. My pet peeve is hearing someone say “a photo is worth a thousand words” because it’s really a thousand different and sometimes conflicting words as we all see the world via our own lens and experience. And working at NLP has also made me acutely aware of the depth and reach of misinformation affecting so many more people I am close to than I ever thought.

3. How has your work as a photographer and your efforts supporting photographers of color influenced your work at NLP?
En Foco, where I worked for over 20 years, was a space for photographers of color to thrive. It was led by photographers of color, nurturing and providing opportunities that are challenging to find in the mainstream media or art world. Journalism is rife with stories “about” people of color, but often not told by them. We advocated for voices that ensured a pluralism in the field of photography. To me, the carryover to NLP is similar yet just as urgent. We have seen the consequences of inaccurately portraying or stating something or not standing up to wrongdoings, so helping others explore the information they consume — whether written or visual — is incredibly satisfying. I recall explaining what NLP does to a close friend when I first joined, and she exclaimed, “It’s like you joined the X-men in the fight against misinformation!” I still love that.

4. What is the most surprising thing you have learned or experienced since joining NLP?
The most surprising thing to me, is the prevalence of well-meaning people accidentally amplifying misinformation, or choosing to do nothing when they see it online or hear others echoing information without thinking about it first. Wasn’t that called gossip in the before-times? Most people don’t take the time to question information or consider its origin, which heightens this malaise of misinformation. I remember seeing an article saying that falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster because we are distracted or feeling lazy. Those are eye-opening numbers, so I’ve been learning how to thoughtfully engage in such conversations.

5. What news literacy tip, tool or guidance do you most often use?
Lateral reading. You might think it should be reverse image search, but as a photographer, I find it way easier to spot manipulated images than to know all the details surrounding a particular context or story. I love learning new things, and drilling down to find varied and reliable sources has been an essential part of that.

6. What is the first thing you will do as we fully emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic?
Have multiple parties with those I most cherish and hug them every two minutes, maybe more. It would be outdoors with solar lights and papel picado strung throughout the trees, candles and firepit blazing, songs and laughter (and tears for those we’ve lost), and loads of yummy Brazilian food.

7. Aside from fighting for facts, what else are you passionate about?
In no particular order: good photography, martial arts (I am a black belt in Taekwondo), scuba diving, motorcycle safety (I am a former national trainer and current RiderCoach for MSF-usa.org.), travel, the environment, especially reducing my plastic consumption, and people in all their complicated splendor.

8. Are you on team dog, team cat, team wombat? Or do you prefer stuffed animals to pets?
Team dog! We fell in love with Reign since the first photo our NLP colleague Eryn posted on Slack. She was fostering the pup, who was found as a stray in West Virginia. We drove down to D.C. to meet her and drove home together that same weekend. She has kept us on our toes ever since and spends most of her time flopping on the floor asking for belly rubs in between trying to tree squirrels.

9. What one item do you always have in your refrigerator?
Bacon and farm fresh eggs at the ready, although we don’t keep those in the fridge.

10. What’s in your pocket/backpack/laptop case right now?
I haven’t had to carry it around for so long, I had to go look! Magenta stickie note pad, my favorite mechanical pencil, extra battery pack (for when my camera with the ring-tone runs low on power), and dark chocolate (OK, that might be a bit stale by now…)

We’re proud to announce that NLP and our Checkology® virtual classroom have been selected in the annual list of the Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).  The organization recognizes electronic resources “that provide enhanced learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their educator collaborators.”

NLP was honored, in part, for providing high-quality resources that educators were able to adapt for use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Checkology was recognized as one of the best electronic resources available.

“The digital tools honored in 2021 demonstrate how education has stepped up to support remote and blended learning environments,” AASL said. “They provide high-quality resources for many content areas and engaging learning activities. In developing the list, the committee also focused on equity and access.”

The organization released the list this week and you can access the full list of honorees at www.ala.org/aasl/best.

“NLP is thrilled that Checkology is being recognized for the free resources it offers to help educators teach news literacy and to connect all students with news literacy education,” said Ebonee Rice, NLP’s vice president of the educator network. “Today’s students are navigating an incredibly complex information landscape and Checkology is more important than ever.”

Checkology helps middle and high school students learn how to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources, and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods. NLP expanded access to Checkology last year by dropping the paywall for educators and parents engaged in distance learning or homeschooling, due to the pandemic and school closures.

Earlier this month, Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, gave the keynote address for our annual 2021 News Literacy Change-Maker Awards. Adams issued a strong warning about the harm misinformation can cause, and we wanted to share his important remarks with you.

“The information systems we use to search, and to filter, to like and share, are gathering and monetizing our habits and interests in increasingly alarming and pervasive ways,” Adams explained. “They learn what we like and what we believe, what’s important to us, what we value, and not only echo these things back to us, they also often reinforce, rather than challenge, our view of the world.”

There’s a cost to the free content we read and share, he noted. “Every day, legions of trolls, opportunists, extremists and ideologues use these same systems and platforms to organize and to do harm. These bad actors target the same values and beliefs and biases that drive our online habits. They exploit our devotion to justice for outrage clicks. They convert our love for our families into skepticism about vaccines. They use our patriotism or our desire for self-determination to manufacture doubt and distrust in our institutions … and in one another. They pollute our information streams, derail our discourse and lead us down dangerous rabbit holes. In doing so, they don’t just diminish our individual civic power, they diminish our collective civic integrity. They exacerbate injustice, endanger marginalized people, deceive us into taking civic actions that are divisive and inauthentic — that are based on lies — and they threaten the viability of our democracy.”

But, Adams said, we can combat falsehoods and misinformation. “The good news is that there is strong evidence that high-quality news, media and information literacy education makes us much less vulnerable to mis- and disinformation. Keeping our emotions in check, thinking critically about claims and evidence, being mindful of sources and standards … and doing some simple checking when something seems questionable … these things usually work to prevent us from being duped into adopting beliefs that are false — and from having our civic agency hijacked and redirected.”

Watch his complete remarks and consider supporting NLP.

Alan Miller, NLP’s CEO and founder, was interviewed by the Aspen Institute for its Disinfo Discussions digital series. In the conversation, Alan examined the role of news literacy and education as an effective countermeasure to the spread of mis- and disinformation. “We don’t tell people what to think. We are giving them the tools to develop how to think… All sources, even the most credible sources, combine news and opinion, advertising. They’re all, in some way, potentially flawed. Bias creeps in and mistakes are made – it’s inadvertent. So, we really want to give people the ability to make those judgments for themselves and to decide, ‘Should I trust this? Should I share this? Should I act on it?’.”

Listen to the full interview here.

 

Alan also was a guest on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour podcast, where he spoke to the former public interest lawyer and presidential candidate about the benefits of being news-literate. In response to Nader’s question about how young people classify themselves based on their political beliefs, Miller said, “When people tend to see their news and information through prisms of red and blue, they see the world in terms that are more black and white. And they close themselves off from ideas that contradict their beliefs and let their emotions overwhelm reason and evidence…I think it’s critically important that we encourage them to both have the skills to determine what’s credible, to be mindful about what they’re consuming, but also to get a wider array of sources and to challenge their beliefs.”

Listen to the full interview here.

Talk about good timing. In early 2020, Erin Wilder encouraged her fellow high school English teachers to hop in the car and head from Hoschton, Georgia, to Columbia, South Carolina, for a NewsLitCamp®. Wilder was certain a drive of a few hours would prove valuable to her colleagues — Warren Clemens, Joe Jenifer and Ramona Avery.

We all know what happened soon after. By early spring, the pandemic forced schools to close for the remainder of the school year and begin in the fall of 2020 with distance learning or hybrid models of teaching. To keep students engaged, educators have had to get creative and collaborate more than ever.

That’s where Wilder’s expertise with NLP’s Checkology® came in. Her team was new to the e-learning platform, so her experience was invaluable for building a media literacy curriculum in an asynchronous learning environment. “Because I had experience with it, I had a plan from the outset,” Wilder says.

Her colleagues were glad to have that guidance.  As team leader, Wilder organized content and sequenced lessons to achieve learning outcomes.

“Erin was using Checkology a lot. I hadn’t pulled the trigger until this year, and I needed to learn how to use it in the classroom,” Clemens says.

The NewsLitCamp was worth the drive, says Jenifer. It gave him insight on how to approach the topic. “That experience really helped me to better implement the media literacy curriculum and use Checkology,” he says.

The curriculum is part of a required class for about 600 Mill Creek High School seniors. “We want them to be literate citizens,” Wilder says. “We want them to understand how these skills transfer when they go out into the world.”

Making connections to their lives

The team taught  the Checkology lessons “InfoZones,” “Understanding Bias,” “Misinformation,” “Introduction to Algorithms” and “Conspiratorial Thinking.”

“The [lesson] videos are fun and allow such great discussions,” Clemens says.

The teachers supplemented lessons with material from The Sift® newsletter, NLP educator resources and other content. Studying algorithms and branded content (advertising disguised as news) allowed them to  demonstrate connections between class material and what was happening in students’ newsfeeds. “I’d pull a social media account up and say, ‘Look what they’re showing me and what they are suggesting for me,’” Wilder says. “We think it’s random garbage that shows up but it’s not random. They can see that pattern is there on purpose and realize, ‘This is what the machine thinks of me.’”

The lessons led to students to learning how to identify whether a piece of content was credible and determining how it had been manipulated. “They’re able to see through the façade of what is being pushed out,” Wilder says.

When teaching “Understanding Bias,” Clemens had students choose a current event and find related news articles that represented different partisan opinions. That lesson also helped one of Jenifer’s students, whose political opinions were shifting away from his father’s, speak openly with him. “It allowed him to intelligently have those discussions with his dad,” he says, noting that “students have to make their own choices, have their own voices.”

And a watershed moment for Jenifer and his students came when they began looking at consumption of media from the perspective of a balanced diet. “You need a balanced diet to make healthy choices. When you don’t have that, it makes for unhealthy choices and unhealthy decisions,” he says.

Lessons learned

Based on the team’s experiences this spring, they have some advice for those diving into news literacy education next fall:

• Don’t go it alone; teach as part of a team.
• Don’t be afraid to take risks and make mistakes.
• Challenge students intellectually and encourage them to think in different ways.
• Familiarize yourself with all material available through NLP and other resources.
• Use examples from daily life to engage students.

Clearly, their pre-pandemic road trip back in 2020 paid off in ways the teaching colleagues couldn’t have predicted, and they’ll be using the lessons learned in the school year ahead.

In recognition of their outstanding achievements in supporting news literacy during an unprecedented and challenging school year, NLP has named the recipients of its 2021 educator, journalist and student of the year awards.

We celebrate these honorees as news literacy change-makers who have distinguished themselves in their commitment to news literacy in their classrooms, in their professions and in their daily lives. NLP added a second student award this year — one for a middle school student and one for a high school student — in response to a dramatic increase in students using our Checkology® virtual classroom.

“After many difficult months for all of us, and especially for educators and students, these honors take on a special significance this year,” said NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller. “Honoring the recipients is always a privilege and a highlight for us, and we are delighted to recognize such an impressive and deserving group.”

Educator of the Year
Library director Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt believes that news literacy skills and habits of mind are urgently needed and apply across disciplines.

“As the librarian, I consider it my duty to integrate news literacy across as many areas of the curriculum as I can,” she said. “In this era of misinformation, social media, and information overload, being news-literate is more important than ever. It is the key to being an engaged and informed citizen of our democracy.”

Vikstrom-Hoyt has seen how students apply the news literacy skills they learn in a variety of subjects. “I’m in a unique position to advocate for news literacy education across the entire curriculum. It is my passion, and my duty to see that our students leave our school as skillful, savvy consumers of information,” she said.

Learn more about Vikstrom-Hoyt’s approach to news literacy.

John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year
In recognition of her dedication to standards-based journalism and her efforts to help young people become more news-literate, NLP has named CNN’s Alisyn Camerota its John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year.

Camerota, a founding member of NLP’s national leadership council, is co-host of CNN Newsroom. She has volunteered her time and talent with NLP since 2017. That year, she spoke to students at the Young Women’s Leadership School in Queens, New York, and wrote about her experience for CNN.com. Since then, she has only become more involved with NLP — participating in events with educators, students and NLP supporters and helping to advance the organization’s work.

“My great hope for NLP is that it can just be more widespread, it can get into more classrooms, it can have an impact on more students,” Camerota said.

Camerota joined CNN in 2014 after 16 years at Fox News, where she was co-host of America’s News Headquarters, a co-anchor of Fox & Friends Weekend and a contributor to the Fox & Friends weekday franchise. She also has hosted prime time TV news specials and worked at ABC, NBC and local news outlets earlier in her career.

Named for one of the most revered newspaper editors of his generation, the John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year Award is given annually to journalists who have contributed significantly to NLP and its mission. The honorees, who receive $500 and a glass plaque with an etched photo of Carroll, are selected by a committee of NLP board members and staff. During an acclaimed journalism career spanning four decades, Carroll was the editor of three major U.S. newspapers — the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. He was a founding member of NLP’s board and served as its chair for four years until shortly before his death in 2015.

Discover why Camerota is committed to news literacy education.

Gwen Ifill High School Student of the Year
Like many teens, Ana Rodriguez turns to social media to find out what is going on in the world. But she is well aware that sorting fact from fiction in her newsfeed can be difficult. That’s why, as a sophomore at Archie Williams High School in San Anselmo, California, she embraced the skills and mindset of becoming more news-literate.

“I don’t want to be sharing false information with the people around me,” said Rodriguez, 15. “As a Latina woman in society, it is fundamental for me to have the right information at all times.”

Learning about bias and misinformation helped Rodriguez complete an important project in her social studies and English classes that explored pseudoscience and, specifically, racism in science.

Find out how news literacy informs Rodriguez’s world.

Gwen Ifill Middle School Student of the Year
Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini, 13, was in seventh grade at Central Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts, when she unintentionally shared a post that was not credible and soon discovered how far and fast misinformation can spread.

In eighth grade, Mirudulaa and her classmates were introduced to Checkology, which helped her learn how to discern credible information from rumor, conspiracy theories and manipulated content.  “After using Checkology I feel a lot more informed and confident,” she said. “Checkology helps you improve, realize and change your ways.”

Hear Mirudulaa describe her experiences.

The Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Awards honor the trailblazing journalist — and longtime NLP supporter and board member — who died in 2016. The awards are presented to female students of color who learn and apply news literacy skills and who represent the values Ifill brought to journalism. Ifill was the first Black woman to host a national political talk show on television as moderator of Washington Week, and she was a member (with Judy Woodruff) of the first female co-anchor team of a national news broadcast, PBS NewsHour.

Related Stories:

• Celebrating News Literacy Change-Makers
• Educator helps integrate news literacy across disciplines
• NLP’s Journalist of the Year has witnessed harm misinformation can inflict
• News literacy skills help student better understand hard of bias, misinformation
• Student gains knowledge, confidence to help stop misinformation’s spread
• Meet our impressive student of the year finalists

Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt
2021 Educator of the Year
Director of library services
The Overlake School
Redmond, Washington

It didn’t take the tumultuous events of 2020 and the accompanying flood of misinformation to convince educator Kelly Vikstrom-Hoyt that news literacy should be part of every school’s curriculum. She already knew it, and she had established herself as a news literacy leader at her school.

“As the librarian, I consider it my duty to integrate news literacy across as many areas of the curriculum as I can,” Vikstrom-Hoyt told NLP. “In this era of misinformation, social media and information overload, being news-literate is more important than ever. It is the key to being an engaged and informed citizen of our democracy.”

Sara Baquero-Garcia, Overlake’s social studies department chair, nominated Vikstrom-Hoyt for NLP’s educator of the year award — which includes a check for $500 —  because of that leadership. “Kelly has been at the forefront of our school’s efforts to integrate news literacy and media studies across the middle and upper divisions,” she said.

To Vikstrom-Hoyt, the urgency of teaching young people news literacy skills and habits of mind was evident as dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 went viral, and rumors and falsehoods about racial justice protests and the presidential election deepened divisions and fueled anger.

While working against this tide of misinformation, educators simultaneously had to transition to distance learning or a hybrid model of teaching. But experience with NLP resources like the Checkology® virtual classroom gave Vikstrom-Hoyt and her students an edge. “I think that… Checkology, specifically, was perfect for the pandemic because it already had these ready-made modules that were interactive, where kids could get the information and I could give it to them as asynchronous work,” she explained.

Baquero-Garcia noted that Vikstrom-Hoyt challenged her students to look for information on Checkology about bias, point of view and validity of sources. And she helped other educators integrate news literacy in their lessons and become comfortable with the technology.

“Kelly is really passionate about her subject and committed to bringing news literacy and media literacy to classrooms. Kelly is one of those people that is always looking over the fence to try to discover what the next area of need will be so she can get right to work on it,” Baquero-Garcia said.

Vikstrom-Hoyt saw proof that students were absorbing what they learned and applying it to other disciplines. For example, an eighth-grade civics class that completed the Checkology lesson on bias in the media then worked on projects for their civics teacher using what they had studied. “The teachers told me that they incorporated a lot of the language and the lessons they learned into that project without even being prompted to do it,” Vikstrom-Hoyt said. “Then, even better, when they did the next project down the line that wasn’t even tied to the lesson I had given them, they were still pulling in those skills, and naming the terms and the things that I taught them in the Checkology lesson.”

She describes news literacy as a “super skill” that empowers young people to engage responsibly with information and she believes it will benefit them in the classroom, in college, in their careers and in daily  life. “In order to be an engaged citizen of the country, I think you need to have these skills to get the information, and to vet the information and understand where it’s coming from.”

Vikstrom-Hoyt shares her passion for teaching news literacy in this video.

Alisyn Camerota
Co-host, CNN Newsroom
2021 John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year

Alisyn Camerota has provided unflinching coverage, essential context and vital and verified information on major news stories to millions of people during her career as a leading broadcast journalist.

She also has seen misinformation, hoaxes and baseless rumors increasingly pollute the information landscape, as facts fall victim to false narratives. If such distortions and falsehoods are not called out and corrected, she says, real harm can occur, which is what happened during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“People stormed the Capitol because they had misinformation. They were fed falsehoods and lies about the election, and they didn’t know that,” Camerota, who co-anchors the afternoon program CNN Newsroom, said during a video interview with NLP. “You can have your own conspiracy theories, but you can’t have your own facts.”

In recognition of her dedication to quality journalism and her efforts to help make young people more news-literate, NLP has named Camerota its John S. Carroll Journalist of the Year for 2021.

“Alisyn has made a real commitment to help us bring news literacy education to students across the nation,” said NLP founder and CEO Alan C. Miller. “She has taken the time to talk to our students, participate in and help steward important NLP events, and bring greater visibility to our mission as a respected journalist on the national stage.”

Camerota is the eighth journalist to win the award, which is given in honor of Carroll, a revered newspaper editor and former NLP board chair who died in 2015. Recipients of the award receive $500 and an engraved glass plaque with an etched photo of Carroll, who was the editor of the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, The Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times.

“I’m really touched and flattered to receive the John S. Carroll Award, particularly this year, because it has been a trying year,” Camerota said. “It has been a really challenging year for journalism to be able to broadcast during a global pandemic.”

Camerota has been involved with NLP since 2017. That year, she led a lesson on journalism at the Young Women’s Leadership School in Queens, New York, and later wrote a piece about her experience for CNN.com.

“One of the best things that’s happened since I’ve been involved with NLP is meeting the students and getting to know them,” she said. “These kids explained to me how they took the course and understood that they had the tools to distinguish real news from fake websites, or satire websites, and how empowered they felt.”

In April 2018, she interviewed two students from the school during an NLP dinner in New York. That July, Camerota hosted an awards luncheon for the two students at CNN, where they each received the Gwen Ifill Student of the Year Award.

In 2019, she became one of the initial members of NLP’s National Leadership Council and helped arrange a cultivation lunch at CNN’s New York bureau at Hudson Yards, where she and CNN colleague Anderson Cooper were the featured guests. In January of this year, she was among a group of CNN executives, anchors and reporters on the panel “Women on the Frontlines of News Reporting” at NLP’s virtual NewsLitCamp®, presented with the network.

“My great hope for NLP is that it can just be more widespread, it can get into more classrooms, it can have an impact on more students, because I have a lot of faith in this next generation, that they want to be engaged, they want the real information, but they need the tools to do it,” she said.

Camerota brings a wealth of journalism experience to her work with NLP. She joined CNN in 2014 after 16 years at Fox News, where she was co-host of America’s News Headquarters, a co-anchor of Fox & Friends Weekend and a national correspondent for several years.

She has covered the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, the Paris and Brussels terror attacks and the Parkland school shooting. In the hours after the shooting, she interviewed several student survivors and has followed their stories through today. Camerota has also anchored various prime time specials, including Tipping Point: Sexual Harassment in America and The Hunting Ground: Sexual Assault on Campus. Earlier in her career she worked at ABC News, NBC and local news outlets.

In this video, Camerota discusses why she believes news literacy is so important.

Ana Rodriguez
2021 Gwen Ifill High School Student of the Year
Archie Williams High School
San Anselmo, California

Like many teens, Ana Rodriguez, 15, turns to social media to find out what is going on in the world. But she is well aware that sorting fact from fiction in her newsfeed can be difficult.

“As a Latino woman in society, it is fundamental for me to have the right information at all times. We sometimes are not provided with the right concepts on certain topics because of detrimental biases that affect the way my community is perceived,” she told NLP.

This awareness motivated Rodriguez to learn how to think critically about the information she consumes and shares. And she got that chance when her English teacher Matthew Leffel, who nominated her for the Gwen Ifill High School Student of the Year Award, introduced his 10th-graders to Checkology^® this past school year.

“A few years ago, I wouldn’t have checked my sources or the sources the articles that I’m reading about come from, but now I would definitely do that because I don’t want to be sharing false information to the people around me,” she said.

Leffel noticed immediately how the news literacy concepts resonated with Rodriguez. “There is an unmistakable spark in a student’s countenance that appears when they have decided to grab hold of their learning. Even in a classroom mediated by distancing guidelines, I could see it in Ana’s masked face in English class as we began an interdisciplinary project that focused on challenging pseudoscientific claims,” he said.

Learning about bias and misinformation helped Rodriguez complete that project, which explored pseudoscience, and more specifically, racism in science. She examined the long and harmful history of racial bias in scientific thinking, from eugenics to contemporary medical discrimination.

“For the project, I had to research several pieces of information that provided reliable facts and supported data, as well as researching those who did not provide effective information,” Rodriguez wrote in her essay for NLP. “In our world, almost every situation we choose to participate in is based mainly on the information we acquire from it.”

“Being able to distinguish reliable information from detrimental bias has been of great importance in my life. It has allowed me to help my parents and other family members during  the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rodriguez said, noting that she was able to advise her family how to steer clear of misinformation about vaccines.

“I want my community as well as many others to have the opportunity to learn about the dangers of biases that connect our world, as I want everyone to understand the consequences that manipulated stories and concepts can lead to,” she said.

In nominating Rodriguez, Leffel described her as a “fiercely dedicated student” who holds herself to high standards and often pushes herself beyond them.

Being named NLP’s high school student of the year has bolstered her belief in herself. “It has given me the sense that I accomplished something very big, and that I can be successful with the things that I do. Like a kick of confidence, I would say.”

The award commemorates Ifill, the trailblazing journalist — and longtime NLP supporter and board member — who died in 2016. It is presented to female students of color who represent the values Ifill brought to journalism. Ifill was the first Black woman to host a national political talk show on television as moderator of Washington Week, and she was a member (with Judy Woodruff) of the first female co-anchor team of a national news broadcast, on PBS NewsHour.

In this video Rodriguez explains why news literacy is important to her.

Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini
2021 Gwen Ifill Middle School Student of the Year
Central Middle School
Quincy, Massachusetts

Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini, 13, always had assumed that misinformation did not affect her. Then last year, when she was in seventh grade, she learned firsthand how it could fool her and just how fast and how far it can spread.

“I read a really interesting post and sent it to so many of my friends. But when I was reading it for the 10th time or so, I realized it wasn’t real news. It was fake,” she told NLP.

She immediately tried to stop the falsehood in its tracks. “I had to tell all the friends I’d sent the post to stop spreading it and why it’s not credible and not reliable,” Mirudulaa said. “But it was already too late. They sent it to their friends and so on.”

That’s when she realized just how hard it is to stop the spread — and potential harm — of misinformation. “I didn’t have any of the tools to see if it was real, or even learn about how to see if it’s real,” she said.

It was a hard lesson. “I felt very upset that now, I just told my friends things that are not true. And I was kind of really disappointed in me.”

But she would soon learn how to avoid being fooled next time.

When she entered eighth grade, school librarian Helen Mastico introduced Mirudulaa and her classmates to NLP’s Checkology^® as part of a media class. Mirudulaa learned how to discern credible information from rumor, conspiracy theories and manipulated content. Now, she never shares information that she has not verified as reliable. And if someone sends her content that she recognizes as misinformation, she lets them know and advises them to explore  Checkology.

When nominating Mirudulaa for the student of the year award, Mastico, wrote that “Mirudulaa is an intelligent, dedicated, and conscientious student. Her tenacity at getting to the root of an issue is impressive, and I believe she deserves the award in recognition of that drive. Like a good journalist, she is thorough and attentive to detail, whilst retaining a compassionate attitude and a good idea of the bigger picture.”

The award commemorates Ifill, the trailblazing journalist — and longtime NLP supporter and board member — who died in 2016. It is presented to female students of color who represent the values Ifill brought to journalism. Ifill was the first Black woman to host a national political talk show on television as moderator of Washington Week, and she was a member (with Judy Woodruff) of the first female co-anchor team of a national news broadcast, on PBS NewsHour. She will receive a $500 gift certificate and a glass plaque with an etched photo of Ifill.

Mirudulaa, the first middle school student to receive the award, said she feels empowered by her news literacy lessons.  “After using Checkology I feel a lot more informed and confident because I can actually see which is fake and which is not fake. Checkology helps you improve, realize and change your ways.”

She tries to regularly share her Checkology knowledge with her fellow students, and even beyond the classroom.  “I showed my parents many of the tools I saw in Checkology. Even they felt it was a big impact on their life. They changed. They stopped viewing some of the websites that they thought they could rely on,” Mirudulaa said. And, she added, they were even more proud of her than before.

Watch this video to hear Mirudulaa discuss the importance of news literacy in her own words.

Related Stories:

• Celebrating news literacy change-makers
• NLP honors 2021 News Literacy Change-Makers
• NLP’s Journalist of the Year has witnessed harm misinformation can inflict
• Educator helps integrate news literacy across disciplines
• News literacy skills help student better understand hard of bias, misinformation
• Meet our impressive student of the year finalists

This year we had an abundance of strong submissions from so many amazing students that it was difficult to choose just one winner in each of the categories — high school and middle school. While we felt that all the students deserve kudos for their hard work, we want to highlight two students — our high school and middle school Gwen Ifill Student of the Year finalists. Congratulations to Grace Min and Kyrie M. Blue!

Grace Min
Finalist, 2021 Gwen Ifill High School Student of the Year
Canfield High School
Canfield, Ohio

Studying news literacy has had a truly powerful and personal impact on Grace Min, 15. In the essay she submitted to NLP, she told us that becoming more news-literate allows her to navigate the world with less fear and more confidence.

“The world is a scary place filled with uncertainty and lies, or at least that’s what we’re told growing up. But in reality, the world is far less scary when you are able to recognize truths from lies,” the 10th-grader wrote.

Being able to recognize fabrications and distortions about her community and her identity came as a revelation, which she described with honesty. “Growing up a woman of color in a predominantly white area, I wasn’t able to recognize truths from lies as easily as I would have wanted to. Unfortunately, at a very young age, I became subject to both blatant and subtle racism. My own racial identity changed into [something] that I despised about myself,” she wrote. “It wasn’t until I discovered news literacy education that I was able to understand that all of the racism I faced were lies. Doing my own research, finding credible sources and being able to create my own opinions was a liberating shift.”

Min’s English teacher, Chris Jennings, who nominated her for the student award, is not surprised at her depth of understanding and her ability to connect news literacy concepts to her place in the world. “Every once in a while —maybe once or twice a year, and sometimes less often — a student comes into my life and completely validates my decisions to become an educator. Grace Min is one of those students,” he wrote.

Completing Checkology® lessons about bias and misinformation helped Min better understand the rise in anti-Asian crimes that has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. “These hate crimes are typically fueled by lies that people consumed whether it be a straight lie or from faulty sources,” she said. “My experience with Checkology and news literacy education has taught me about my own racial identity but has also manifested itself into my everyday life.”

She also has recognized that becoming more news-literate will serve her well not only in high school and college but also into adulthood. “By learning about news literacy education, the skills we pick up are going to be showcased throughout our lives.”

Kyrie M. Blue
Finalist, 2021 Gwen Ifill Middle School Student of the Year
Central Middle School
Quincy, Massachusetts

Kyrie M. Blue, 14, is committed to using her voice and helping others do the same in the name of social justice. And she has found that being well-informed about events and issues that shape society is key to doing so.

Librarian Helen Mastico, who nominated Blue for the student award, said she has matured from a shy student to a classroom leader. “Kyrie Blue is an impassioned student who is actively involved in fighting for social justice. Since attending our school debate club in grade six, she has overcome her shyness to become an active participant,” Mastico wrote to NLP.

Blue’s mastery of news literacy is evident in the comprehensive and visually appealing infographic she submitted to NLP. Titled “What I learned from Checkology®,” the work features images and icons that function as signposts and entry points for the reader to digest detailed explanations of key news literacy concepts. She includes First Amendment rights, freedom of speech, the limits to constitutional amendments, “fake news” and the effects of the digital world on how we consume news.

“Checkology is a great tool. It taught me to be open-minded and appreciative of all the rights I have in America, but it has also taught me to be cautious and find out the truth for myself,” Blue wrote in her summary.

She noted “how the freedoms of the First Amendment are little sets of independent rights each American has. Rights that protect us from tyranny and allow us to live independently of the government.” Blue demonstrated an understanding of how a lack of accountability gives people and organizations free rein to post whatever they want online and highlight different logical fallacies.

Mastico noted that recognition from NLP would help Blue grow even more. “The Gwen Ifill Award will help her find her voice and be a louder advocate for herself and the people around her.”

And that is exactly what Blue said she hopes to do.  ”I want to teach others what Checkology taught me. It made me want to learn more about my rights and freedoms, and it made me want to find out what I want to do in the future to help others.”

Related Stories:

• NLP honors 2021 News Literacy Change-Makers
• NLP’s Journalist of the Year has witnessed harm misinformation can inflict
• Educator helps integrate news literacy across disciplines
• News literacy skills help student better understand hard of bias, misinformation
• Student gains knowledge, confidence to help stop misinformation’s spread

Today, the News Literacy Project (NLP) joined more than 3,000 diverse, locally owned, nonprofit and community-based newsrooms calling on congressional leaders to provide support for America’s community newsrooms in the infrastructure bill. Led by the Rebuild Local News coalition, the group sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stating, “Local news is a pillar of democracy’s infrastructure – and it is crumbling.”

The letter noted that “news deserts and ‘ghost newspapers’ – newsrooms so desolate that they don’t truly cover the town – abound across the country, especially in rural areas and communities of color. The vacuums are being filled by social media, partisan hyperbole, and harmful disinformation.”

NLP founder and CEO Alan Miller explained that NLP joined in signing because “getting people to be more informed and engaged in their communities is at the heart of our mission and that only works if there are viable local news organizations that provide the public with fact-based, standards-based news and information.”

NLP joins 20 other signatories, including the American Journalism Project; the Association of Alternative Newsmedia; the Institute for Nonprofit News; the National Association of Hispanic Publications; the National Federation of Community Broadcasters; the National Newspaper Association; PEN America; Report for America / The GroundTruth Project; the Solutions Journalism Network, and others.

Read the full letter here.

The 2020-21 school year has been anything but routine for teachers and students all over the world. Unpredictability led to a mixture of remote, hybrid and in-person learning environments — with some classrooms experiencing all three. At the same time, demand grew for resources to teach students how to separate fact from fiction and identify and combat dangerous misinformation. The Checkology® virtual classroom was an ideal resource to meet that demand across learning environments.  

The News Literacy Project (NLP) set out to better understand educators’ experiences teaching news literacy. We asked several teachers to record short videos answering the question, “How did you use Checkology this past year?” Check out their responses below. 

K.C. Boyd, library media specialist 

Jefferson Middle School Academy, Washington, D.C. 

Boyd used The Sift®, NLP’s free weekly newsletter for educators, to “jump start” her news literacy lessons. When the jury delivered its verdict convicting former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, Boyd discussed the five core values of journalism with students in her “Media Studies” class. “I knew that day that my students were going to be inundated with a tremendous amount of information and, unfortunately, misinformation. So, I was looking for a lot of material that would help remind them to seek out credible sources,” she says. “This platform has been a tremendous support and help in my instructional program.”  

Her lesson, inspired by The Sift, focused on preparing students to actively seek out credible information concerning the trial and verdict.  

Referenced lessons and resources to check out: 

These two issues of The Sift are most relevant to Boyd’s lesson planning regarding the Chauvin trial: 

• The Sift: Media trust insights | Covering Minneapolis | Spotting fake science – This issue discusses the five core values of journalism: “acting as watchdogs over powerful people; making information open and transparent; valuing facts in pursuit of truth; offering a voice to those lacking power; and shining light on societal problems.” 
• The Sift: ’60 Minutes’ controversy | Trial coverage choices | Biden press questions – This issue includes classroom-ready slides about how local, national and international news organizations handled Chauvin trial testimony. 

Maia Hawthorne, AP English and speech instructor 

Twin Lakes High School, Monticello, Indiana 

Hawthorne presented a four-day intensive news literacy mini-unit that featured lessons from Checkology, followed by news literacy “moments” throughout the year. She began by having students take the “How news-literate are you?” quiz. The results were “eye-opening” for her students, she says. They “are shocked to find out how little they actually know about how news works.” Afterward, “[students] consistently tell me that they love Checkology because it’s a chance to practice what they’ve been hearing, it’s hands on, it resembles things that they see when they go online and also it gives them a break from listening to me so much.” She taught mostly in-person during the 2020-21 school year.  

Referenced lessons and resources to check out:  

• Checkology virtual classroom – Checkology, NLP’s free e-learning platform, helps give students the habits of mind and tools to evaluate and interpret information. 
• News Lit Quiz: “How news-literate are you?” 
• Pear Deck – Hawthorne used Pear Deck to get feedback from students while presenting information about news literacy. 

• The Sift – NLP’s free weekly newsletter for educators — delivered during the school year — explores timely examples of misinformation, addresses media and press freedom topics and discusses social media trends and issues. 
• Check Center Missions – Hawthorne’s students “especially love[d] the Check Center missions where they feel like detectives.” Missions are fact-checking activities in which students get to the bottom of a piece of information using digital verification tools and skills they learn about in the Check Center. 

Patricia Russac, library director and history teacher 

Buckley Country Day School, Roslyn, New York 

Russac taught in a hybrid learning environment this year and says the act of “teaching out and teaching in” was not easy. She used Checkology with sixth- and seventh-graders  to build their news literacy skills and noted that Checkology worked well “because the resources are so accessible to remote learners as well as to students in the room.” After each lesson segment, Russac gave students the opportunity to ask questions and participate in class discussions. “The students had plenty to share about what they heard, saw and viewed online,” she says. “It was a powerful reminder as to why news literacy education should be part of every grade level and across subjects. It is not enough to teach it just in the humanities. Math and science need news literacy education as well. Data matters.” 

Referenced lessons and resources to check out:  

Russac’s students completed four Checkology lessons to develop their news literacy skills. Of the four, the students’ favorite lesson was “Conspiratorial Thinking.” Use the demo links below to preview the lessons. To learn how to assign lessons to students, check out our “Quick guide to assigning a course.” Here are the Checkology lessons Russac taught:  

• “InfoZones”– Categorize information into one of six “zones:” news, opinion, entertainment, advertising, propaganda or raw information. 
• “Misinformation” – Learn to understand different types of misinformation and the ways that it can damage democracy. 
• “Understanding Bias” – Develop a nuanced understanding of news media bias by learning about five types of bias and five ways it can manifest itself, as well as methods for minimizing it. 
• “Conspiratorial Thinking” – Discover why people are drawn to conspiracy theories and how our cognitive biases can trick us into believing they’re real. 

Lauren Walton, library media specialist 

North Reading Middle School, North Reading, Massachusetts 

Walton created a brand-new digital literacy curriculum and used Checkology in a hybrid learning environment. “The interactive format of Checkology and my ability to see each individual student’s answers and progress kept students engaged and helped me assess students’ understanding and mastery of skills,” she says. Her middle school students particularly enjoyed the lesson “Arguments and Evidence,” because of their passion for debate. Using Checkology to support her digital literacy curriculum, Walton was able to help students “go from blindly accepting everything they read online to critically examining each piece of information to determine its author, purpose, and credibility.” 

Referenced lessons and resources to check out: 

You can find and assign Walton’s digital literacy course to your own class. Just select “Change course” in the course management area and assign “Digital literacy (by educator Lauren Walton)” under the preset course options that appear. Here are the core lessons featured in her course: 

• “Introduction to Algorithms” 
• “InfoZones” 
• “Arguments & Evidence” 
• “Understanding Bias” 

Walton’s course also featured exercises, challenges and Check Center missions to help reinforce and extend student learning, which she found valuable. “I recommend that educators who are thinking about implementing Checkology into their classrooms use the Check Center…and show students the videos on fact-checking skills.” 

Diana Montague, professor of communication and department chair 

University of Findlay, Findlay, Ohio 

Montague noticed that “students, like many adults, really struggle to distinguish news from opinions.” That’s why, in her “Principles of Speech” course, she asked students to choose a current event or issue and find a news article and an opinion piece relating to it. Her students then fact-checked and sourced both pieces of information. “Checkology was an excellent tool to introduce our speech students to some of the categories of mediated information and give them a vocabulary to identify and distinguish news from opinion, news from propaganda or advertisements, and curated, verified news from raw information,” Montague says. “Checkology also helped [students] look for red flags to identify misinformation and it gave students some insight into how conspiracy theories are started and disseminated in the media.” 

Her university experienced a variety of learning environments (in-person, fully remote and hybrid), and she credited “the asynchronous platform of Checkology” as providing “a stable set of exercises no matter where students were at any given time.” She enhanced her students’ learning by connecting lessons to what was unfolding in the news. “If you are planning on using Checkology, I would encourage you to reinforce the lessons by pulling in the day’s news, opinions or trending topics on social media feeds. This encourages students to apply what they learned from the exercises to breaking news,” she says. 

Referenced lessons and resources to check out:  

Montague assigned three core Checkology lessons to develop students’ news and media literacy. Use the demo links below to preview the lessons. To learn how to assign lessons to students, check out our “Quick guide to assigning a course.” 

• “InfoZones” – Categorize information into one of six “zones”: news, opinion, entertainment, advertising, propaganda or raw information. 
• “Misinformation” – Learn to understand different types of misinformation and the ways that misinformation can damage democracy. 
• “Conspiratorial Thinking” – Discover why people are drawn to conspiracy theories and how our cognitive biases can trick us into believing they’re real. 

Liz Norell, political science professor 

Chattanooga State Community College, Chattanooga, Tennessee 

This spring, Norell taught fully remote classes, and offered students course credit to complete some or all Checkology assignments and write a short reflection on what they learned. She knew that Checkology content would align well with her course focus “on how to become a competent citizen, how to evaluate information and how to have civil conversations across political differences.” It became clear to Norell after reading student reflections that “they thought they would be really good at determining what information was trustworthy or not and they really learned a lot.” Based on her experience, she encourages other educators to use the platform. “I hope that others will jump on board because I think [Checkology is] exactly what our students need at this moment in our history and in this political sphere,” she says. 

Referenced lessons and resources to check out:  

To replicate Norell’s student-choice-driven use of Checkology, simply assign the “All lessons” preset course to your class and then turn off the “Course Lock” setting. This will allow your students to see all available Checkology lessons and begin them in any order.