One of the biggest challenges our society has been facing in recent years is the spread of misinformation, both intentionally and unintentionally. Our upper-grade students are especially susceptible to this if they are receiving most of their information from social media, which is why I was pleased to see the district invest in Newsela. This educational tool provides teachers with real-world texts on topics that engage students, enabling teachers to design lessons that foster critical thinking, information literacy, and excitement in the subject.
As a librarian, I see how tools like this can help students filter through the noise of online information so they can focus on the content of what they are reading and critically evaluate the claims and evidence being presented. But, we must also ensure that our students are learning, from an early age, the importance of considering the source of their information. Specifically, they need to be taught the difference between a search tool and a source, which is a distinction that I see many adults failing to recognize as well. Newsela is a tool that helps organize sources for students to consider.
Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing - these are search tools. Generally speaking, they are not content creators. The purpose of a search tool is to direct you to sources where you can find the information you need. Think of Google as the mall directory where you look to see where in the mall you can find shoes (for those of you who remember mall directories!).
Sources are the things that actually contain information. Think of the source as the shoe store. It's where the thing you need lives. Sources vary in type, author, audience, publisher, and purpose, and these are all things that should be evaluated when considering the reliability of a particular source. When I teach information literacy classes, I teach students to not just read the source (article, blog post, video, etc), but to determine who wrote/created it, what entity if any published it, and to consider what purpose the author intends the information to serve. Duck Duck Go is not a source; it is a tool to get you to sources. WebMD is a source, but each piece of content on the site is written by an individual author whose credentials are worth taking into consideration as you evaluate the information, just as each shoe in the shoe store has been created by a different brand. A publisher, just like a shoe brand, has a specific audience and purpose, which you should also consider when evaluating information. The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization that publishes sources, including online content and journals. You may not be able to identify a specific author on certain AAP online content because it is information that is endorsed and supported by a well-respected and established organization as a body. (Think of them as Nike.) In other instances, you may see an identified author on an article, such as a published or in-progress research study. A research article in the AAPs official journal, Pediatrics, is the work of the individual author(s) and has been vetted by a panel of experts in the subject area. (These are your Air Jordans!).
The above is basic information literacy in a nutshell, but there is enough to unpack there that I spend an entire semester teaching undergraduate students how to do so effectively. Still, you don't need to take a college level course in information literacy to apply a few simple strategies when evaluating information, and these strategies can be taught to children and teens as well:
Think before you share! Have you read the article or do you just think your followers will like the title?
Learn who the author/creator and publisher are. Who is putting this information out into the world? Do they have any expertise to do so? Are they working with an organization that has established credibility?
Is the primary goal of the source to attract attention and elicit an emotional reaction (e.g. click-bait)? If so, think carefully about why the creator and/or publisher wants to do so.
If you are unfamiliar with the source, do a search on it and find out what others have said, even its Wikipedia article. You will learn a lot more about the validity and reliability of a source or other by reading what OTHERS have to say about it, not what they have to say about themselves (which will invariably be a glowing review).
I use these same skills as a Board of Ed member when I am presented with information to review in considering a recommendation from the Superintendent. Without being an expert in all matters school-related, I can apply these critical evaluation skills to determine if we've been presented with credible information and if I need to do some further research on my own to supplement differing perspectives. But I also recognize that in most things, I am NOT an expert and am relying on the advice and research conducted by those who are - the Superintendent, the administrators, the teachers, and even the students in many matters.