Cultivate Student Fact Checkers and Media-Makers With PBS Media Literacy Certification

Purpose & objective

The purpose of this session is to show how media literacy is a vital skill set that all students and teachers (and citizens) should acquire in our technology-mediated society. The need for all citizens to be able to critically evaluate online sources of information has become an urgent and even life-threatening need as misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election continue to threaten our society. We hope to inspire and excite educators with the power of media literacy instruction to amplify their teaching goals, increase student engagement, and improve life outcomes for young people.

Participants will learn:
* How to earn PBS media literacy microcredentials through their existing work as educators.
* The many benefits they gain by becoming a PBS certified media literacy educator.
* How to learn new media making, analysis and evaluation skills from KQED.

Participants will leave with:
* Tools to assess their own media literacy skills and areas for improvement.
* A slidedeck on identifying misinformation that they can adapt for their classrooms.
* A fun activity they can lead with their students.

Supporting research

The ISTE Student Standards include many media analysis, evaluation and making skills, particularly under “Knowledge Constructor” and “Creative Communicator” https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-students

The introduction to the English/Language Arts section of the Common Core State Standards makes it clear that “[t]o be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today’s curriculum.” http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy

The 2016 National Education Technology Plan by the US Department of Education provides the following recommendation in the section on Rethinking Teacher Preparation: “Provide pre-service and in-service educators with professional learning experiences powered by technology to increase their digital literacy and enable them to create compelling learning activities that improve learning.” https://tech.ed.gov/files/2017/01/NETP17.pdf

The Stanford History Education Group published a study of over 7,000 students from middle school to college who completed dozens of tasks related to judging the credibility of information they encounter online. The results of the study are summarized by the authors as, “Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the internet can be summed up in one word: bleak.” https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:fv751yt5934/SHEG Evaluating Information Online.pdf