Information Literacy, Responsibilities, and Student Outcomes.
Responsibility
Many years ago, I had a student who was a HUGE Bears fan. Being a Packer fan, there was playful ribbing that went back and forth. He is now a "friend" on Facebook and to further the banter I sent him an article that featured a well known Bear player discussing how he would leave the Bears to retire a Packer. I knew this wasn't true, but found it funny and thought he would get a kick out of it. It made him so mad as he thought it was real. We talked about it at length and I finally explained it was a fake article meant for satire. He explained that he and his family were so angry that they were considering writing the player to explain why the player should not do this. 😂 This made me think long and hard before taking the responsiblity of sharing anything on social media (even as a joke).
Responsibility was a word included in the P21 student outcomes and discussed through shared resourses and Podcasts this week. Students (All of us really) need to take responsibility with their curation, use and dissemination of information.
What is concerning is that students are emerging in the information world largely with social media guiding their course without the the skills of discernment. The podcast suggests using the idea of empty information calories and full information calories analogy. We as parents, teachers, mentors also need to provide experiences to cultivate these skills. P21 Student outcomes as well as the standards discussed last week ALL point to the importance of these.
Information Diet and Bias
My information diet varies with the time of year and role(s) that I am engaging. As a person, my media diet consists of the local news paper (Post and Courier) both on-line and paper version, Google News, and Facebook. With important announcements of a political nature or major happenings, I have made it a point to cross check various happenings reading various accounts. I have also used fact checking services such as Snopes and Factcheck.org as early on I found that media has bias and even my sources of information may provide a slant to the information given. I was thankful that according to Clay Johnson and the hosts of Liturgists podcast I was practicing their steps to scrutinizing the information I am consuming.
They spoke of media bias and misleading information consumers by mis-using information. That said, we who partake in social media often forget that we are essentially narrowing our scope simply by the curation of our social media accounts. Those accounts limit what we see given our choices of who we follow, read, block. We must stretch ourselves to read and consume outside of these areas and biases and lead by example with our students. Asking questions and asking them to dissect and reflect on what they are reading will help combat this misleading.
Interactive Media Bias Chart is a resource that I find helpful and one that is fun to play with. I often will have my theatre students look at different monologues on the same thing or plays that offer different perspectives on one happening.
Cultivating questioning, responsible information diet, and offering experiences in skills of discernment should be paramount at any level of School Librarian. Practicing the song that the Liturgists share on the podcast (not suitable for the younger folk) or something like it might be a great way to present the material.
Overall, It comes down to being mindful, responsible and willing to dig deeper when it comes to healthy information diets.
References
Gungor. M. (Host). (2017,March, 7) Fake News and Media Literacy Media[Audio Podcast] Retrieved from https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy81NmVhMWU3OC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/aHR0cDovL3BvZGNhc3QudGhlbGl0dXJnaXN0cy5jb20vZS9tZWRpYS1saXRlcmFjeS0xNDg4ODkyNDg1Lw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg-dDOnN7yAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQEg&hl=en
Muller, B. (2022, January 20). Interactive Media Bias Chart Public. Ad Fontes Media. https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
Hi Megan! Thanks for your insights on this tricky, tangled topic. The story you shared of your former student illustrates such an important issue, one that Mike and Clay discussed on The Liturgists episode we listened to, of satire being interpreted as fact and becoming, inadvertently but undeniably, its own tidbit of fake news. Without detracting from the good of a (sometimes) free internet full of information is for so many people, it is imperative that we know, discuss, and teach how to analyze information before we react to, share, or dismiss it. I've heard several teachers at my school refer to the CRAAP test (if this is a new acronym to anyone else, like it was to me, that's currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose), and I know there are numerous other acronyms, rubrics, and guidelines that can aid us as information seekers in determining the reliability and objectivity (or lack thereof) of the news that comes across our proverbial desks. I think, just as you say, that the key is teaching young people to be mindful consumers who have a responsibility to diagnose what they see, hear, and read.
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