Critical Thinking and Fake News

During the Developing in Digital Worlds workshops, I observed many teachers creating learning experiences for their students based on collaborative reasoning and argumentation. I considered how, as a facilitator, I could create some engaging learning activities along this line. Classes were studying 'digital footprint' and had been assessing sites and emails for signs of phishing. They were learning how to detect lies and stay true. I considered some of the topics that we had covered in the DIDW sessions and thought about how these could be incorporated with lie detection and came up with the activity above.

It was quite challenging as it required students to read the information on the site I had provided with respect to the statement in blue and then find two other different and reliable sites that corroborated that message. When they could do this, the 'Rule of 3' can be assumed to mean that the statement is true. It was difficult because students had to read the whole texts that they were given and also that they accessed. Sometimes the heading or title made a statement that wasn't actually proven by the text. Often, the crux of the text was right at the bottom of a fairly long article and students had to persevere, scroll down, by-pass adds etc to get to the end.

Some students made a very good attempt. I also learnt that allowing students to do this with one or two others helped them all to complete it. Have a look at:
Hailey
Brianna