Can We Produce Mighty DGs (Digital Giants)? (Blog 2)
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When the Internet launched back in 1995, I was just a budding new teacher. I remember going to my media specialist about how to send an email. She got so excited when she received Hotmail from someone. Who remembers phonefree.com? That was the tops in technology for me. I called everyone in the world for FREE! Information became available quick, fast, and in a hurry. We suddenly went from zero to 360° in minuscule time. A computer, dial-up Internet, and time—pronto--information literacy was born, or was it? The technology gave us the opportunity to develop information literacy, which we must use to interpret digital/media.
We the Digital Citizens (2nd Grade) ♦ Introductory Song
Information
literacy involves a more than a cell phone, iPad, or laptop computer and
Internet browsing. It conjures critical
thinking and cognitive evaluation to interpret the credibility of information
that is out there. Who puts information
on the Internet? Well, anyone. All information is not created equal. There are two Cs on the Internet: credible
information and convincing lies.
Information is a source of strength and we information professionals
must unite to teach our very young from the start how to dispel conspiracy
theories a.k.a. fake news by fact checking.
The Framework for 21st Century Learning provides a structure
to build knowledge, skills, and expertise four children to be the most informed
digital citizens of the 21st Century. We want the mighty DGs (digital giants)! Check out the video how they can take charge
of the information around them.
Born
into technology, immersed into information, and experiencing
digital/media are rites of passage for children today. For us born in the 70s, it is a
smorgasbord. What do I put on plate first—Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? I am truly behind
the 8-ball when it comes to social media. I hear people talk about things around but I have
no idea what they are talking about. They say it is on Facebook. For example, another
teacher asked me yesterday, “Did you hear that Joe Biden is dropping out of the race?” I
said, “Who, what, when, where, and how?” This is fake news at its best coming from social
media, the place I have avoided for several years. We have been taught right from wrong, lies
from truth—it is just a part of the American upbringing—right? Quite naturally, we should be
able to tell the difference between real news and fake news. Not so fast!
False, but it is commonly shared on
social media sites, such as Facebook.
My
information diet consumes of books by creditable authors, peer-reviewed journal
articles with empirical data, journal articles written by teachers with
strategies for better pedagogy, and young adult novels. Since COVID-19, my information intake has
included media information from CNN, ABC, and ESPN, every day, all day. My low-fat diet surged from bowls of mixed
fruit and tossed salads, to Lays wavy chips and French onion dip. From one news
media to the next, it is hard to figure what is truth. It is because they are all biased. They place a heavy emphasis on where they
want our focus.
Media
is a platform with a wide-open range; it is like infinity, there is no end or limit. It is like Star Trek; it can take you where
no man has ever been before (in your mind!).
Media can take information and turn it on its head, producing unsubstantiated
claims or fake news. This "media nihilism" or presentation of “alternative facts” is to control our thoughts (The Lithurgists, 2017). Even more mindboggling is the flight speed of
fake news. Temming (2018) wrote that falsehoods are more likely to be shared
than the truth.
We school
librarians are information professionals and our reading should be cyclical. We
should read everything from fake to real and back to fake again. We must be aware of what the vultures are
putting out there to strengthen our fact checking skills to appropriately teach
the steps to truth finding to our young learners. It boils down to money—fear, anger,
disgust—these stack the duckies. The aim
must be to teach young people how to test claims and use scrutiny more every
day. We want our young learners to find
evidence of everything that is presented to them. These are the skills for the mighty DGs!
Common
Sense Education. Digital citizenship curriculum. Retrieved from
Temming, M.
(2018, March 8). On Twitter, the lure of fake news is stronger than the truth. Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/twitter-fake-news-truth
I completely agree with you that we as librarians should read the real, the fake, and everything in-between. It’s important for us to know what’s out there. Either to stop it in its tracks when it’s brought up in conversation or to show to our students why it isn’t real and what the real stuff looks and sounds like. I love your example of the spider fact, *sheepishly raises hand**, I was one who believed this when I first read it on the Internet many years ago. I think it would be a great lesson for students to research different stories they have heard like this to determine if they are fact or fiction. It would be a fun way to start turning them into skeptics :) . (Comment by Lindsey Arant)
ReplyDeleteI think that the young people need hands-on ways to learn how to spot fake news when they see it I played the game in one of uploads in this week's module and got some wrong. I actually marked more of the ones that were correct as incorrect. I guess I was being a bit too critical. However, that list by the Lithurgists is a great place to start with a check list. I used to keep up with rap music decades ago to understand what my students were listeneing to and "appear" hip to their music genres. However, over the years, I have not kept up with the changes in the music and now I am lost on the artists. I cannot let this type of thing happen with the fake news. I read too much to let this happen. It's just now I will read with another focused purpose and teach our young people to do the same.
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