Educators: Sign up for our online professional development series

Is one of your goals as a teacher to help your students make sense of the torrent of news and other information streaming through their online worlds?

Would you like to empower your students by providing them with the news literacy skills they need to become active and engaged participants in civic life?

Our online professional development sessions are for you!

Teaching News Literacy is an affordable series of four online workshops that meet these needs. Led by Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, and John Silva, a National Board Certified Teacher and NLP’s director of education, these workshops will give you everything you need to begin introducing news literacy into your classroom, including dozens of ideas, examples and tools to jump-start your news literacy instruction.

You can register for one, some or all of the sessions here ($10 per session/$30 for all four).

Session 1 – An introduction to news literacy education: This session makes the case for news literacy as a vital 21st-century skill and provides an overview of concepts and tools. We’ll put news literacy instruction in context and demonstrate how to integrate it into your classroom, using timely events and examples. We’ll also introduce important concepts and skills: how information gets filtered, how journalists decide if an event or issue is newsworthy, how the First Amendment and the watchdog role of the press play important roles in our democracy, how to evaluate bias in the news media, how to detect and debunk viral rumors, and how to analyze branded content. Tuesday, Aug. 28 (5 to 6 p.m. ET)

Session 2 – Exploring the misinformation landscape: Learn how to teach students about “fake news” and the many other forms of misleading, inaccurate and outright false information that they encounter every day. We’ll tackle the misinformation landscape: why it’s important to teach students about it, and how to use examples of misinformation to engage students in news literacy and civic learning. We’ll also discuss the authentic civic pathways and actions made available to students through studying misinformation; introduce the concept of “digital forensics” (skills and tools that can help students debunk manipulated and false images); and examine the ways that producers of misinformation are likely to exploit technological advances in the near future. Wednesday, Sept. 12 (5 to 6 p.m. ET)

Session 3 – Using news literacy to drive civic engagement: Consuming, engaging with, sharing and creating information are the most fundamental and common civic actions that anyone can take. This session will explore how news literacy learning can ignite civic engagement and improve civic literacy and reasoning. We’ll look at the connection between news literacy and civics by examining the vital role that information plays in the national conversation and discussing the opportunities for meaningful civic engagement that today’s information landscape offers. Finally, we’ll provide tips, ideas and strategies for using news literacy to supercharge a “consume/engage/create” cycle around timely civic issues. Thursday, Sept. 27 (5 to 6 p.m. ET)

Session 4 – Using digital forensics to drive news literacy learning: This session will primarily focus on applying key digital forensics skills to student activities and engaged learning. Tuesday, Oct. 9 (5 to 6 p.m. ET)