Science: The Greatest Tool for Media Literacy

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Participate and share : Interactive session

Daniel Rezac
Let’s face it — if adults can’t navigate our media landscape, how can we expect students to do so? How do we choose online resources in a wilderness of misinformation? Let’s look at media literacy through a science lens, and practice choosing online materials based on scientific inquiry.

Audience:	Curriculum/district specialists, Library media specialists, Teachers
Skill level:	Beginner
Attendee devices:	Devices useful
Attendee device specification:	Smartphone: Android, iOS, Windows Laptop: Chromebook, Mac, PC Tablet: Android, iOS, Windows
Participant accounts, software and other materials:	No accounts are needed for this. It may be helpful to have a Google Drive account to save resources.
Topic:	Science of Learning
Grade level:	PK-12
Subject area:	Language arts, STEM/STEAM
ISTE Standards:	For Coaches: Digital Citizen Advocate Support educators and students to critically examine the sources of online media and identify underlying assumptions. For Education Leaders: Equity and Citizenship Advocate Model digital citizenship by critically evaluating online resources, engaging in civil discourse online and using digital tools to contribute to positive social change. For Students: Knowledge Constructor Students evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility and relevance of information, media, data or other resources.

Proposal summary

Purpose & objective

Learning Objectives:

Attendees will be able to:
Practice using a model of scientific inquiry to decide the fact or fiction of media stories
Discover how media sites and platforms use strategies to muddle the truth
Uncover how local media often masks their identity to engage or push agendas
Decide whether media claims are fact based on only the information provided
Synthesize a strategy for navigating the news with students- using science.

Outline

Session Flow:

Introduction: Kahoot Quiz to gauge misconceptions about media literacy

Objective: Purpose, agenda, and what we’ll learn together.

Activity: Fact or Fiction: attendees decide whether media articles are from reliable sources.

Using the Scientific Method: Teachers are given a model to break down well-known media headlines.

Model in practice: testing the method on new, fresh sources, together we see how consistently using science holds up on all sorts of media.

Summary / Retest: Swing back to the original Kahoot, to see if people’s misconceptions were changed.

Supporting research

Resources:
Neil deGrasse Tyson: How science literacy can save us from the internet
https://bigthink.com/videos/disinformation

What is the Uncanny Valley?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYuBDkto2Vk

Dozens of Sites Claiming to Offer Local News Are Actually Linked…
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/metric-media-news-sites/

How mental health became a social media minefield
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/9/30/22696338/pathologizing-adhd-autism-anxiety-internet-tiktok-twitter

Lessig:
They don’t represent us:
https://www.amazon.com/They-Dont-Represent-Reclaiming-Democracy/dp/0062945718

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Presenters

Daniel Rezac, Daniel Rezac

Daniel Rezac has been a science/STEAM teacher, Tech and STEM Director, in addition to being a new media pioneer in education podcasting. His current role is the Senior Partnerships Lead for Tynker for Schools. After graduating with both an M.Ed and CAS in Technology Education, he joined the planning committee for IDEA, became a Google Certified Innovator (2009), and built an education podcasting network (EdReach). He’s produced hundreds of educational videos and podcasts in the past decade. He continues to train educators in Computer Science teaching methods and speaks on edtech, media, and myriad forms of literacy.