Is it Real or is it Fake

In these days of "alternate facts", "fake news", and propaganda on steroids, common sense seems to have flown the coop. This page has some excellent resources you can use to teach your kids how to correctly identify sources that are factual and reliable.

I HIGHLY recommend the book Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News by Jennifer Lagarde and Darren Hudgins. Most of the sources come from that book. There is a copy in the West Library or, better yet, buy your own for your classroom. It's a must-read! If you have resources you'd like to add, please fill out THIS FORM.

"Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start." Here's a quiz that will help you and your students see how well they identify factual from opinion statements. Take the quiz yourself. You might be surprised! The great thing about this one is that it provides more detailed statistical information about the answers.

Citizen's Guide to Fake News is a website dedicated to all things false and misleading in the news today. It provides factual information on the topic, examples, and what you, Citizen, can do to combat it.

Here's a game that tests your ability to determine whether an article and its source are fake or real.

One of the types of misleading news we have to deal with are conspiracy theories. There are many sites that help you figure it all out but here's a highly recommended one.

Anyone under the age of 30 most likely get his or her news from social media sources via sharing. In order to learn to spot it, your students must first learn the different types of false or misleading news. Here is a great site that breaks it all down. There's also a lesson plan you can use.

"NewseumED is a collection of free online resources, activities, and workshops created to promote media literacy skills for everyday life."

Images are fodder for fakers. The pictures we see online are often misused, misrepresented or downright photoshopped. Google's reverse image search is a great way to fact-check the pictures we see on our newsfeeds, twitter pages, and facebook posts. The video to the right shows you how it's done.

CCPS advocates using the C.R.A.A.P. Test to evaluate web sites and we in the library teach that method. Here is a PDF with a full explanation of the acronym. There's also one called the FART Test but that's just going too far, don't you think?

Below are some free lesson plans that you might find helpful. They are either middle school or high school level and can be adapted to suit your students. These are complete plans, many with warm-up and extension activities included.

Everyone needs a good set of tools, just ask a carpenter, doctor, or teacher! Sharing is not ALWAYS caring, especially where news stories are concerned. Below are some Fact Checking tools you can teach your kids to use as they peruse their Twitter feed, FB or Instagram posts.

  • FactCheck.org - A tried and true favorite.

  • Snopes.com - Regardless of what you hear on social media, the researchers here are on the up and up. Not perfect but they adhere to strict guidelines when researching a story.

  • Whois Lookup - Helps students understand how to evaluate sites based on domain or IP addresses

  • Hoax Slayer - This one reveals those pesky email and social media hoaxes that seem to crop up over and over.

  • Fact Checker - Another commonly used source to check for bias, fakeness, etc.

  • FotoForensics - You can actually submit a picture from a website or that you've downloaded to this site to see if it's been manipulated.

  • Bad News - It's all in the choices we make, news-wise. Produced by Cambridge University. Be sure to start with About Bad News to understand how to play. Warning, it's addicting to be the bad guy.

  • Satirical News - It's kind of scary when real, verifiable news stories are mistaken for satirical but such are the times we live in.

  • Media Bias Chart - This site is nice because it comes with lots of explanation about how data is gathered and what they do with it.

  • Mind Over Media: Analyzing Contemporary Propaganda - This is an excellent resource to help kids learn what propaganda is and how to spot it. Propaganda has been a problem since, well, forever. Our students need to be savvy enough news consumers to be able to see it for what it is rather than share it as truth.