Start with a Question

Teaching our children and students how to recognize fake news is a good first step, but it should not be our goal. I wrote about the spread of fake news recently and shared a variety of research, data, and resources for teachers to help students develop media literacy skills. But I think that I – and many of my peers who have written and shared with urgency about fake news – stopped short of what is really needed.

We need to go farther. We need to teach our children what to DO once they have determined an article or image is fake news. Here's why we need to take this next step, and how we can do it together.


Why? At it's worst, fake news has caused violence – as in the case of the man firing a rifle in a pizza shop after reading a fake online article that the restaurant was "harboring child sex slaves" inside. Sadly, the man in this situation is not the only adult who has fallen for fake news. Pew's recent research indicates that nearly a quarter of adults admit …

I'm an educator in many ways: I'm a learner, a teacher, a parent, and a leader. Each role makes me better informed and better qualified to fulfill the other roles. I value all four of these vantage points, and here's why.

1. Learner Over the past few months, I have developed skills in privacy policy vetting and app deployment for the teachers and students at my school. I've also started to develop a library of openly licensed education resources in content areas and grade levels where I have never taught as a classroom educator. These skills and resources only came with significant research, collegial support, and practice. And these are only my most recent learnings. One of the best parts of my role as an education technologist is that I know the field will continue to develop and change. I'm still learning and exploring the potential of virtual reality thanks to offerings from a few companies my school works with and the free apps available on iOS. I will always …