This assignment started off by reading roughly 10 articles about news articles, including talk about how to distinguish between fake and real news. Following this, we had to chat with our chat group, first discussing our term projects, then three reasons why college students need to be more digitally literate, then creating a list of 20 steps college students can take to improve their digital literacy.
The first article talked about how most people so see a fake news story believe it, including a finding that 75% of American adults who were familiar with a fake news headline saw the story as accurate. The second article showed survey results describing what students do and do not know about checking the news. The third article overviewed the Stanford digital literacy study. The fourth article provided some example items from the study to test myself on.
The next five articles were very similar and discussed how to distinguish between fake news and real news. They provided tips on how to be more digitally literate, and how to avoid falling for articles with inaccurate content
Moving on to our group chat, Weiyan and I began our discussion by talking about our term projects. She is doing the whole course option, and the media she is using is Tumblr. She is making infographics of the course and posting them on the Tumblr account. So far she has created an account and has started posting graphs for unit 1.
We discussed how I am also doing the whole course option, but that I am doing the daily journal project option, through the media of a blog. So far, I have made at least one blog post per day. I plan on catching up to our current unit as soon as possible.
Next, we discussed three reasons why college students need to be more digitally literate, based on the articles we read. Our first reason was that there are too many people believe fake news, about 75% of adults. Second, we said it is important so they can utilize online information correctly in essays, research, and assignments. Third, many fake articles contain political biases, so if people believe the information, it may impact voting in a negative way.
Finally, we created our a list of 20 steps college students can take to improve their digital literacy, based on the next few articles we had to read. Our list is included below.
1)Look closely at the URL, 2) Watch out for misspellings or awkward formatting, 3)be skeptical of the headlines, 4) Check the author’s sources to confirm that they are accurate, 5) search for the article photo or image to verify where it came from, 6)check the “about” section and google it, 7) Inspect the dates to make sure they make sense, 8) add the word “fake” when googling the “about” section, 9)Check if any other news sources have the same story, 10) Search the author to see if they are credible, 11) If there are links in the article, check the links and see whether it makes sense, 12) Utilize fact-checking websites, 13) Check the article comments to see what people are saying about it, 14) Be careful if the headline is all caps or obviously photoshopped pictures, 15)Look at the quotes in a story, 16) Don’t share the news if not sure it’s true, 17) If there are a lot of banners and pop up ads it probably isn’t a good article, 18) If the story is set in the future, it is less trustworthy, 19)If the news source doesn’t seem to employ editors, it is not a strong source, 20) If the story attacks a generic enemy, it is not good reporting.
Reflecting on this assignment, it was very relevant, because we are in the era of “fake news”. Now, more than ever, inaccurate news is being spread, catching people with interesting headlines, and things can spread quicker and quicker with the internet becoming so popular.
It was very helpful that this assignment did not just focus on how people fall for fake news so often, but focused on teaching us how to be more digitally literate. Providing us with so many examples was great, because now when I read a news article, I can think of all of the methods we learned to distinguish between fake and real news. If I ever start reading an article and can tell it is fake, I can disregard it, and try to find an article on the topic that is more trustworthy.
Additionally, it was nice to talk in our chat groups about our term projects. Up until now, these term projects have been a fairly private experience. Unlike other assignments, term project updates do not get posted to a discussion board, but to an assignment dropbox. Talking about projects with members of our chat groups was cool because it gave me a window to look into my group members’ skillset, and see how they wanted to present the course material.
Additionally, creating the lists about digital literacy was valuable, because it made me go back and reread suggestions from the different articles. When I did this, I began to see how much overlap there was in the suggestions. In this way, I became very confident in those suggestions that were referenced multiple times, and I am likely to utilize them in the future.
This is another example of an assignment that is not only interesting but is practical and can be applied right away in my daily life. This is awesome, because, in most of my classes, the stuff I learn is not really immediately useful. This class continues to be a good use of my time!
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