2. Make Your Moves
Build Good Habits
The web is a unique terrain, substantially different from print materials. Too often, attempts at teaching information literacy for the web do not take into account both the web’s unique challenges and its unique affordances.
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- Michael A. Caulfield
This challenge relies heavily on Michael Caufield's work. Please see his book for his original work.
Lesson
Online news, tweets, Instagram posts, oh my! Figuring out what is true and what has been spun or even completely fabricated is an ongoing challenge. Learning how to build a habit of skepticism when confronted by proclaimed truths is an important skill youth and adults, alike, must develop in order to maintain an informed democracy.
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From checking our emotions to developing investigative moves, Michael Caulfield has developed a guide to help uncover the truth behind the claims made by the messages we are inundated with online and in other media.
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Additional Resources: TED Talk "How Fake News Does Real Harm" by Stephanie Busari
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TED Talk "How to Seek Truth in the Era of Fake News" by Christiane Amanpour
Challenge
Once you have read through Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers and learned about the four moves and a habit that can help us determine the reality behind media texts, search online for a media text that evokes a strong feeling in you. Consider online articles, tweets, social media posts as viable texts.
Once you have selected a text, return to Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers and analyze the text by choosing at least one strategy from each of the sections devoted the four moves: "Look for Previous Work," "Go Upstream," "Read Laterally," and "Field Guide."
Create a blog post that includes a screenshot and link to the media text you analyzed. Underneath the text, reflect upon the emotion that you had to check when reading the text. Then, using a combination of images and words, document your analysis from each of the four moves. Capture a screenshot of your image for Instagram and caption it with your overall conclusion about the text. Use the hashtags #teachwhys #teachwhyschallenge1.​​
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Example Post
The post below is an example of a post made by one of Robyn's students.​
