Teach skills!
As a Teacher Librarian, part of my job is to teach students the skills they need to detect misinformation and vet credible sources. I am currently part of a Washington State organization called Teachers for an Informed Public focused on teaching those skills to students. The group holds monthly Zoom meetings open to any educator that focus on how we teach students the skills needed to evaluate information and sources.
Lessons created by TiP founders are available through WA State's Open Education Resource for any educator. They include lessons that ask students to evaluate their social media feeds, explore the YouTube algorithm for suggesting videos, SIFT (stop, investigate, find better coverage, trace) sources or stories, and more. These are skills all librarians should be teaching. Teacher Librarians could also teach them to parents so they can support media literacy at home.
We want people to become smart information consumers who can tell fact from fiction and who recognize bias. We also want to instill in citizens a sense of responsibility for the information they share. Each individual is responsible for their own learning and for the information they pass on to others. The truth matters, and it is relatively easy to uncover, even today.
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Comments (4)
Hi Sarah,
I'm really glad to know that 'Teachers for an Informed Public' exists--sounds like the group is doing excellent work. You mentioned that there is a "focus on how we teach students the skills needed..." and I'm curious if the group has considered using novels as one of the tools to teach media literacy?
I've been giving this more thought as a method, since storytelling can be "sticky" and it is often easier to remember a story that you read or that someone told you. For example, I've wondered if any educators have assigned "The Hunger Games" to students as part of their teaching of mis/disinformation. To Marybeth's point about finding strategies for initiating meaningful discussion, novels might be a good one. "The Hunger Games" is just one of so many novels that can engage students, capture their imaginations, and spark real dialogue that may stay with students.
Hi Sarah,
I love your ideas on this topic, and fully agree that we must reach out into the community, beyond our immediate library environments. It sounds like the work that Teachers for an Informed Public is doing in reaching out to librarians in order to empower them to teach these important skills is just the kind of outreach that we need more of in order to grow in our field as leaders at the forefront of information literacy education. The SIFT model is a concrete and memorable skill for learners, and one that they could share with others in their social orbits. Do you think that in addition to learning the importance of sharing credible information, learners could come away with ideas on how to effectively engage others in a discussion about this topic? If so, what kinds of strategies might learners utilize to begin, and effectively engage, in these conversations?
Hi Sarah:
Thanks for joining our conversation. I have the same question Maggie asks: How do you reach parents? Is it a process that could be rolled out to the greater public via public libraries?
Love the idea of teaching parents. Do you or does anyone in your organization do that? How do you reach them?