iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

A new law requires K-12 schools to add media literacy to curriculum for English language arts, science, math and history-social studies.

"Media literacy can help change that, advocates believe, by teaching students how to recognize reliable news sources and the crucial role that media plays in a democracy. "

“The increase in Holocaust denial, climate change denial, conspiracy theories getting a foothold, and now AI … all this shows how important media literacy is for our democracy right now,” said Jennifer Ormsby, library services manager for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “The 2016 election was a real eye-opener for everyone on the potential harms and dangers of fake news.”

Digital Promise is helping educators integrate computational thinking to amplify and enrich lessons across the curriculum.

Check out these webinars on Computational Thinking in the classroom!

Sleepless night and eyeball fatigue. Cyberbullying and profound device-separation anxiety. Research identifies harmful side effects of too much tech on teens with alarming regularity. But a new report from the Pew Research Center suggests parents are just as compromised by our portable screens. In “How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions,” researchers not only compiled data on the behavior of tech-addled kids (they’re on their phones from the moment they wake up!) or the concerns of hand-wringing parents (what do we do about the fact they’re on their phones from the moment they wake up!), but on the behavior of parents, too.

These resources are suitable for use with pupils aged 13-16.

BBC Radio 1 presenter Dev looks at how computational thinking can help solve problems in the real world. Practical solutions, abstraction and algorithms, and encouraging digitally competent citizenship.

Alongside each short film, there is more information about the content of the film, and suggestions of how it could be used in the classroom.

Do students need to learn about fake news? And more generally, should they learn how news is created and how to evaluate its credibility?

Thousands of schools all over the world believe the answer is yes.

Fake news has been on Maggie Farley's mind further back than 2016 when President Trump brought the term into the vernacular.

Farley, a veteran journalist, says we've had fake news forever and that "people have always been trying to manipulate information for their own ends," but she calls what we're seeing now "Fake news with a capital F." In other words, extreme in its ambition for financial gain or political power.

"Before, the biggest concern was, 'Are people being confused by opinion; are people being tricked by spin?' " Now, Farley says, the stakes are much higher.

So one day she says an idea came to her: build a game to test users' ability to detect fake news from real.

Voilà, Factitious. Give it a shot. (And take it from us, it's not as easy as you might think!)

Walk through any middle or high school and you'll find most students with a device stuck in front of their face, snuck under a desk, or capturing a selfie. Students owning a personal device are younger, and the rate of alarm in schools is getting higher. Whether a hallway, a classroom, the library or cafeteria, schools are being invaded by these expert techies and teachers are afraid of what this world is coming to. 

Our students are masters; they can send a duck-lipped Snap faster than the speed of sound and they're able to text or post on Instagram before any adult catches on. Students aren't afraid to pull a device out at any time; seemingly professionals. As we teach and learn in the 21st century schools look almost the same as they have historically, but students don't. At each turn it seems there is an experienced student with a device and along with that comes the hesitation of teachers who feel their best hope is to post a sign on their classroom's door forbidding technology from crossing the threshold. 

I say, we've been hoaxed. 

We've been fooled into thinking our students are tech savvy when they're really text savvy. 

A few days ago we shared with you a new Google feature that allows you to easily fact check online content. Today, we are sharing with you 10 good tips that will enable you to critically assess the veracity and credibility of online content (e.g. news stories).  These are guidelines Facebook Help Centre provided for it users to help them spot fake news. However, these tips can also apply to any other type of content. Students can use them to evaluate digital content and enhance their critical reading comprehension.  We have embedded these tips into the visual below so you can print and share with your students in class.

On Thursday, Colleen Rose asked this million dollar question on her blog.

What holds us back from embracing technology in our daily practice?

Now, I could have taken the easy route and posted a reply to her blog but instead, I collaborated with my buddy Peter McAsh to come up with this Top 10 list big list.

We seem to have mastered Dropbox Paper so that was our platform for this collaboration.

Note that we’re not afraid to bite firmly on our tongues…

This isn’t necessarily a definitive list and there’s no order but it’s what we came up with.

Perceptive adults and savvy students know that saying something doesn’t make it a fact, and neither does publishing information on the internet. But how to know which websites are sharing accurate information? As middle and high school students conduct research or access the internet on their own time, they need to be able to determine the accuracy of what they’re reading by reviewing websites with a critical eye.

I have heard mounting frustrations and complaints about kids not being able to manage their digital habits. I just sat with a teacher this week who was on a mission to ban cell phones nationwide (in school) because it was “distracting her students from learning.” She is working so hard and struggling to get her kids to focus on or care about what she feels she is held accountable for teaching. It is frustrating when learners are distracted in school and policymakers are starting to take actions. This teacher’s (an many others) dream might become a reality according to a proposed ban on cell phones in California states that usage; “interferes with the educational mission of the schools, lowers pupil performance, particularly among low-achieving pupils, promotes cyberbullying, and contributes to an increase in teenage anxiety, depression, and suicide.”

I hear (and see) that students are connected to their devices far too often that is healthy and productive and social media can have very real social and emotional consequences.

I am not going to pretend that this isn’t a challenge and that these aren’t real issues that need to be dealt with. My husband is a 10th-grade teacher and I know the struggle is real but I would argue that banning cell phones is short-sighted.

With many schools now shifting to allow BYOD (bring your own device) at school, combined with a general push for integrating more technology in the classroom, it’s obvious that students need to examine the consequences of their online activity–both good and bad. Here are five reasons why schools should take a lead by promoting digital and social media literacies curriculum, and promoting digital citizenship inside and outside of the classroom.

We live in dynamic times, and it can be extremely valuable as well as thought provoking to have an opportunity to listen to an insightful scholar share analysis about our evolving information landscape. This evening, thanks to a tweet from Jackie Gerstein, I watched an hour long lecture presented by danah boyd (@zephoria) recently in Detroit focusing on “The Future of Information.” To understand our present and future, danah related (among other things) stories of how troll culture has emerged and become a significant part of our media environment which confuses many and leaves people wondering who to trust.

Look up from this screen right now. Take a look around. On a bus. In a cafe. Even at a stoplight. Chances are, most of the other people in your line of sight are staring at their phones or other devices. And if they don’t happen to have one out, it is certainly tucked away in a pocket or bag.

But are we truly addicted to technology? And what about our kids? It’s a scary question, and a big one for scientists right now. Still, while the debate rages on, some doctors and technologists are focusing on solutions.

“There is a fairly even split in the scientific community about whether ‘tech addiction’ is a real thing,” says Dr. Michael Bishop. He runs Summerland, which he calls “a summer camp for screen overuse,” for teens.

Describing yourself as ‘a social media addict’ doesn’t usually inspire concern from other people. In fact, it’s frequently included in bio descriptions on Twitter and Instagram. Decorate your LinkedIn profile with such a claim and you may even find yourself receiving interest from media and publishing companies searching for a savvy digital native. But imagine if, one day, it’s not an accolade or joke at all – but a psychiatrist’s diagnosis?

Social media addiction has been a much-flouted term lately; maybe it’s because it’s January and users are looking to be more active and spend less time online, or maybe that’s because social media can have a negative impact on our mental well-being. But a growing body of research is seriously considering whether problematic and excessive social media usage could be pathological and, in turn, designated as a mental health disorder. 

Be Internet Awesome is a multifaceted program that includes a fun and free web-based game called Interland and an educational curriculum to teach kids how to be safe and responsible explorers of the online world.

When students are learning about research topics and current events, they must also learn about how perspective and bias may affect the information they are reading. Teaching these lessons explicitly is critical in this era of “fake” news.

The following tips and activities are designed to help students understand the choices that journalists make that may affect how readers interpret a story.

Our job as citizens requires more than just being informed. We must also be vigilant about verifying information before posting it on social media. While taking a second look at claims made by politicians and even journalists is a start, we still can’t outsource our brains and our judgment, says Tess Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy. “In my view, we have to look as critically at the fact-checking sites as we do the news articles themselves,” she says.

A good fact-checking site uses neutral wording, provides unbiased sources to support its claims and reliable links, says Frank Baker, author of Media Literacy in the K-12 Classroom and creator of the Media Literacy Clearinghouse. He adds, “Readers should apply the same critical thinking/questioning to fact-check sites.”

Here's a rundown of 10 of the top fact- and bias-checking sites to share with your students.