Abstract
This paper presents an approach to educate secondary school students in the province of Ontario about the credibility of online content. The critical focus here is on integrating computer technology into the teaching of the topic; how to introduce the material in classroom settings with respect to the current curriculum is also outlined. Contrast with an existing proposal for digital literacy developed by historians at Stanford University is provided at the outset. In all, the value of appealing to the current digital experiences of students, when revealing the potential for misinformation, is the critical message. Exploration of social media environments popular with youth and opportunities for game-based quizzes for interactive engagement are both advocated.
Highlights
In this paper, we present novel approaches for educating secondary school students about the origins of online misinformation, promoting greater scrutiny about the credibility of sources
Contrast with an existing proposal for digital literacy developed by historians at Stanford University is provided at the outset
A report released by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) in 2015 (Wineburg, McGrew, Breakstone, & Ortega, 2016) shows a dismaying inability by students to reason about information that they see on the Internet (including an absence of effort to do fact checking by visiting alternate sites (Wineburg & McGrew, 2016)
Summary
We present novel approaches for educating secondary school students about the origins of online misinformation, promoting greater scrutiny about the credibility of sources. As part of our reflection on the potential of our proposed solutions, we integrate as well feedback received from current educators. This enables important commentary as well about how the content that we imagine could be delivered within secondary schools in the province of Ontario in Canada, as a cogent example. This is followed by a section outlining some novel contexts of use (fake reviews, hoaxes and sponsored ads) as valuable topics of discussion in class settings. The final section steps back to emphasize the key messages of the paper and to propose several important final recommendations for the future
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