If you’ve read this far, congratulations. We also hope you’ve figured out by now that this is a FAKE news story.
But how easy would it be for this to go viral? How many fake news reports spread like wildfire during the 2016 presidential election? Real people with real training can still create false news. It’s up to you, as educators, to teach your students to approach online information with a critical eye.
This is only one of many examples of how information literacy skills are more important than ever.
In a recent survey, 83 percent of librarians said information literacy has a large impact on college graduation rates. Though 97 percent of those surveyed said information literacy leads to success in the workforce, just 44 percent believe their libraries adequately support the skill.
Information literacy is critical to democracy, some say.
“The fact that 80 percent of middle school students in a recent study could not distinguish between fake news and authentic news on the web shows that we, as educators, have to do a better job of teaching media literacy in the digital age,” writes Alan November in an exclusive post for eSchool News. “That means paying just as much attention to teaching students how to be smart consumers of information as we pay to what we filter in our schools. Across 12 states and 7,800 student responses, the overwhelming majority of our students from middle schools to universities were easily manipulated into believing falsehoods to be true or credible.”
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