The first webinar I watched was on Classroom 2.0. The webinar dealt with News Literacy, which I think is a very interesting topic considering all the talk of "fake news" in our country at the moment. The chat began with recognizing how difficult it is to find real, credible sources in this day and age. I think that acknowledging that fact is often the first step to releasing yourself from the echo chambers many of us have created for ourselves online.
One concept I found interesting during the webinar was the idea of "circular reporting" where news sources cite each other back and forth, without any new information or fact checking. I had no idea this was something that happened in journalism and I can better understand how difficult it really is to find true information.
One of the graphics in the slideshow for the webinar was about how fake news sources surpassed mainstream ones in the amount of shares they received in the last three months of the election cycle last year. The expert speaker, Tiffany Whitehead, noted that this can make it very hard for parents to discern between fake and real news. If parents can't tell the difference, they can then become the ones who are sharing those types of articles and telling their children about them. This creates a cycle where the students begin reading the fake news and believing it as well.
News and media literacy are important concepts for anyone and everyone in our society. It is our job as teachers to help teach students what is credible and how to know if it's a credible source. Students can then take home that knowledge of credibility testing back home to their parents, and it could change our society for the better. As a future social studies teacher, I feel that this skill fits within my niche very well. There are many connections that can be made between the present and history, so teaching news literacy is a skill that I feel I need to be able to share with my future students. This webinar has helped me see the tricks of the trade to discerning credibility and I hope that I will pass that knowledge on to my students.
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