Thing 14: News Literacy

Readings and Resources

• ​Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world by Joyce Valenza. - Joyce states, "We were guaranteed a free press,  We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press." This may be true, but the first amendment right of a free press has restrictions related to libel, obscenity, sedition, etc. Furthermore,  The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics calls for great integrity. The problem now is prosecuting offenders when anyone can publish worldwide with the click of a button. In reality, the onus falls on the reader to judge the reliability and accuracy of the source. Joyce contends that news literacy should be embedded as a natural part of any research project. I will refer back to this article often as Joyce has curated rules of thumb, vocabulary, and lesson plan sources.
• How to choose your news - Damon Brown TedEd video  - I found this a fascinating perspective as someone who experienced 3 major news channels and a few authoritative newspapers/magazines. However, I think students get tired of hearing about "back in the day." Brown suggests some specific strategies: 1) locate the original news (e.g., a politician's speech or scientific study); 2)follow reporters on social media for current events, 3) check sporadically for updates on breaking news; 5) get info from multiple sources; 5) be careful of anonymous sources; 6) verify information before sharing it. These are great tips, but how many people will do the extra work? 

Lesson Sources - I checked out several of these sources but didn't find anything suited to K-6. Any suggestions?

Tools - I chose to explore NewsELA as our principal has offered to pay for subscriptions. I signed up for a 60 day pro trial. Here's what I learned:

• Good idea to sign up using Google Apps for Education account to enable adding Google classrooms.
  
• You can assign articles to your students which then show up in the students' binders. Teachers can add directions about reading the article, creating annotations, taking the quiz, etc.
• Each article is written on 5 different lexile levels. Each level has a different assessment quiz.
• In some cases, articles are available in Spanish and English. Can switch back and forth between languages with the click of a button.
• Includes assessments such as quizzes, writing prompts, and annotations. Pro subscribers can edit the writing prompts.
• Teachers and students can annotate articles. Annotations only show up on the article with the same lexile level. If students are reading on different levels, teacher must add annotations on each level and then "share" for students to see teacher's annotations.
• Teachers can monitor student progress (number of annotations, quiz grades. etc.)
• Teachers can create text sets around topics such as "computer programmers" or "media literacy."

In summary, I like NewsELA and plan to share it with a colleague who wanted suggestions for how to do close reading with digital resources. I pointed her to Diigo for annotations, but NewsELA is another option.