Handouts & Lesson Plans
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Community of Online Research Assignments (CORA)Fake news assignments from CORA, an open access resource for librarians and faculty.
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Civic Online Reasoning Lessons & AssessmentsCreate an account for free downloads of Stanford's Digital Inquiry Group civic online reasoning lessons and assessments. Includes resources for middle school, high school, and college.
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Lesson Plan: Fighting Fake NewsFrom The Lowdown, the content hub for KQED’s News Education project. Although designed for high school students, would also work with first-year undergraduates.
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Navigating Digital InformationThis playlist breaks down fact-checking skills into eleven short, 13-15 minute videos. A collaborative effort by John Green, Media Wise, The Poynter Institute, and Stanford's Digital Inquiry Group.
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Videos: Fact-Checking ToolsThis playlist of 2- to 3-minute videos includes 1. Verifying Images and Videos; 2. Looking up Claims and Website Owners; and 3. Evaluating Social Media Accounts.
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University of Michigan Library Fake News CourseLesson plans and assignments for U of M's seven-week fake news course.
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Google Search Tips HandoutThis two-page handout provides four search tips students can use to decide if their news is real or fake.
Fake News & the Caulfield Technique
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Web Literacy for Student Fact CheckersThis short, open source book by author Michael Caulfield provides alternative, web-native approaches to news literacy and fact-checking. It is also available as a PDF.
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Recognition Is Futile: Why Checklist Approaches to Information Literacy Fail and What To Do About ItAn argument for moving away from web evaluation checklists to a lateral searching approach.
Stanford History Education Group: Civic Online Reasoning
Michael Caulfield's work is based on research conducted by Dr. Sam Wineburg and his research team from the Stanford History Education Group (now called the Digital Inquiry Group). Their findings demonstrate that students are unfamiliar with basic fact-checking techniques that would allow them to verify the information they read online.
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Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online ReasoningThis report is an executive summary of the Stanford Digital Inquiry Group's project that researched students' ability to evaluate information they read online (and its disturbing findings).