iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

False content online has only multiplied over the years. But the fake news designation has also been used to serve all kinds of purposes—including, increasingly, to disparage real news reporters—so most experts now avoid the term. Instead, researchers usually talk about disinformation, which is purposefully false, and misinformation, which is unwittingly false (either because the publisher made a mistake or because the person sharing the content did). As false content spreads through social media networks, it can oscillate between the two, and it can manifest in various forms, including memes, tweets, or “imposter” content made to imitate real news stories.

Misinformation is a scourge across the internet, misleading us with news that appears real (but isn't) and facts that appear solid (but aren't). How do you prevent falling for it all? That's where our weekly series Misinfo Monday steps in. This edition: how images online fool us.

How can we stop the spread of misleading, sometimes dangerous content while maintaining an internet with freedom of expression at its core? Misinformation expert Claire Wardle explores the new challenges of our polluted online environment and maps out a plan to transform the internet into a place of trust -- with the help everyday users. "Together, let's rebuild our information commons," she says.

Beneath the spread of all “fake news,” misinformation, disinformation, digital falsehoods and foreign influence lies society’s failure to teach its citizenry information literacy: how to think critically about the deluge of information that confronts them in our modern digital age. Instead, society has prioritized speed over accuracy, sharing over reading, commenting over understanding. Children are taught to regurgitate what others tell them and to rely on digital assistants to curate the world rather than learn to navigate the informational landscape on their own. Schools no longer teach source triangulation, conflict arbitration, separating fact from opinion, citation chaining, conducting research or even the basic concept of verification and validation. In short, we’ve stopped teaching society how to think about information, leaving our citizenry adrift in the digital wilderness increasingly saturated with falsehoods without so much as a compass or map to help them find their way to safety. The solution is to teach the world's citizenry the basics of information literacy.

In the past year, many educational institutions began to address the challenge of digital misinformation. As head of a multi-institutional project that addresses these issues, I found this heartening. Less encouraging, however, was the persistence of many myths about how misinformation works, what its risks are and how we might address it. In the hope we might have a more productive 2019, I thought I’d outline some of those myths and realities below.

In an age of democracy via social media, platforms are struggling to combat visual mis/disinformation such as 'spliced' images and deepfakes. Digital media literacy has never been so important.

People of all ages struggle to evaluate the integrity of the digital information that rains down with every web search and social media scroll. When the Stanford History Education Group released findings showing that most students couldn’t tell sponsored ads from real articles, among other miscues, it intensified the scramble for tools and strategies to help students discern better.

But a more recent study by Stanford’s Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew suggests that many of the techniques that students and teachers employ — which include checklists and other practices most recommended for digital literacy — are often misleading.

A better solution for navigating our cluttered online environment, they say, can be found in the practices of professional fact-checkers. Their approach, which harnesses the power of the web to determine trustworthiness, is more likely to expose dubious information.

The following guidelines for interrogating online information, inspired by the fact-checkers’ techniques, will increase students’ odds of determining unreliable sources (and consuming reliable ones).

This is the age of misinformation and fake news. Here are the best unbiased fact-checking sites so that you can find the truth.

"Bad News is a website that offers simulations that show visitors how misinformation is spread through social media. Bad News is available in two versions. The regular version is intended for those who are high school age or older. Bad News Junior is appropriate for middle school and older elementary school students. The difference between the two versions is found in the news topics that are used in the simulations."

This summer, a new California law goes into effect, aimed at supporting media literacy in my home state's school systems. Effective July 1, the statute requires the state Department of Education to provide online resources on media literacy for use by school districts. And some U.S. senators have reportedly floated similar legislation at the national level. These efforts can't come soon enough, given how fast unreliable and provocative online information is dividing the country and challenging the very stability of our democracy.

Laws can only go so far, however. We need to get teachers and parents involved in grassroots efforts to promote media literacy at all levels of education. If you have a high school student in your household as I do, it's time to talk with other parents, reach out to the social studies department, and get organized. If you are a teacher, you should either embrace whatever proactive measures your students' parents want to make or be the first to encourage such a coalition. We need leadership on both sides.

Shortly after the 2016 election, newly elected President Donald Trump—peeved at losing the popular vote to Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton—falsely claimed he would have won the popular vote if not for the supposed votes of 3 million illegal immigrants. The lie spread rapidly across social media—far faster than factual attempts to debunk it. And Twitter bots played a disproportionate role in spreading that false information.

That's according to a new study by researchers at Indiana University, published in Nature Communications. They examined 14 million messages shared on Twitter between May 2016 and May 2017, spanning the presidential primaries and Trump's inauguration. And they found it took just six percent of Twitter accounts identified as bots to spread 31 percent of what they term "low-credibility" information on the social network. The bots managed this feat in just two to 10 seconds, thanks in large part to automated amplification.