Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

The Social Institute Expands Curriculum to Educate and Empower Third-Grade Students 

Durham, N.C.– The Social Institute announced that it has expanded its pioneering peer-to-peer learning technology to meet the needs of third-grade students, available starting Fall of 2023. This gamified approach to supporting student well-being, called #WinAtSocial, empowers students to navigate their social world positively — including social media and technology — to fuel their health, happiness, and future success.

The developmentally appropriate lessons come in response to demand from elementary schools nationwide and the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent advisory on the effects of social media on youth mental health, calling for policymakers to support digital and media literacy. Lessons have been created with valuable insights and ideas from third-grade students and teachers across the country. The lessons are interactive and will challenge students to explore the impact of their everyday choices in a choose-your-own-adventure experience.

By the time students reach the 4th grade, more than half of them are already using popular apps like YouTube, Google Classroom, Video Streaming, FaceTime, and Mobile Gaming on a weekly basis, according to data by The Social Institute. …Read More

5 websites to help students build media literacy skills

Over the past couple years, students have been inundated with a near-steady stream of information and headlines about politics, racial and social unrest, the pandemic, and more. Helping students form discerning media literacy skills is even more essential.

Students must understand how to recognize reputable information and how to identify credible, high-quality journalism. Bias is everywhere, and it’s necessary for young people today to identify it and call it out.

Identifying bias and forming strong media literacy and evaluation skills starts in the classroom. Teachers need resources to illustrate the importance of these skills, and it’s never too early to expose students to news outlets and point out the difference between high-quality and suspect news.…Read More

Nova Launches National Youth Science Communication Initiative: Nova Science Studio

Today, the award-winning science series NOVA, produced for PBS by GBH Boston, announced the launch of NOVA Science Studio, a new national program to teach and engage young people through an interdisciplinary curriculum focused on science communication, digital media literacy, and video production. With a goal to empower youth with the skills to tell engaging stories about science through short-form videos and create a platform to amplify the voices of young people who have been traditionally underrepresented in science communication, NOVA Science Studio will give students exposure to a wide range of careers in journalism, media production, and STEM. The program will run now through June 2021. A video trailer for the new initiative can be found  here.

The program will include 30 middle- and high-school students representing five regions around the country: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West Coast. The program, NOVA’s first focused effort to create educational resources to teach science communication to teens, grew out of a pilot program during the 2018-2019 academic year in the Boston area that worked with nearly 30 students. Each new region will be led by a NOVA Science Studio Site Coordinator who brings an expertise in science communication and video production; the group includes science communicators, producers, and teachers who have a strong track record of covering science through multi-platform storytelling. Names and bios for the site coordinators can be found here.

NOVA Science Studio will also draw on NOVA’s own talent, with participation by members of the editorial, broadcast, and digital teams.…Read More

Fun facts from Britannica: Do cats cause schizophrenia?

For 250 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica has provided the world with researched, verified information. A global leader in education whose flagship products serve the needs of students and consumers on multiple platforms and devices, Britannica has been a pioneer in digital learning since the 1980s.

eSchool News has partnered with Britannica to bring you a fun fact each month, along with advice on how to teach today’s students how to cut through the misinformation on the internet.

Do cats cause schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia affects only 1 percent of the population. Although many people are predisposed to it, most folks are never exposed to enough stress to exhibit any of its symptoms. But could there be a correlation between this serious and complicated mental disorder and our feline friends? Amazingly, yes!…Read More

5 questions students should ask about media

Do your students love to take and edit photos to post on Instagram? Are they obsessed with watching (or maybe even becoming!) YouTube celebs? Do you want to help your students learn how to spot a stereotype on a TV show? Or how to identify bias in a news article? If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider integrating media literacy education into your lessons.

Digital and media literacy expand traditional literacy to include new forms of reading, writing, and communicating. The National Association for Media Literacy Education defines media literacy as “the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, and ACT using all forms of communication” and says it “empowers people to be critical thinkers and makers, effective communicators, and active citizens.” Though some believe media literacy and digital literacy are separate but complementary, I believe they’re really one and the same. They both focus on skills that help students be critical media consumers and creators. And both are rooted in inquiry-based learning—asking questions about what we see, read, hear, and create.

Think of it this way: Students learn print literacy—how to read and write. But they should also learn multimedia literacy—how to “read and write” media messages in different forms, whether it’s a photo, video, website, app, videogame, or anything else. The most powerful way for students to put these skills into practice is through both critiquing media they consume and analyzing media they create.…Read More

3 ways to navigate American politics in the classroom

In our current social climate, it can be tricky for anyone, especially a teenager, to talk about politics and the role of government. But as educators, it’s our job to explain the varying viewpoints that make up our political discourse. It’s also our job to foster an open, secure environment in which students feel safe to share their own opinions.

As an online instructor at a statewide public school, I’ve taught U.S. government and politics during two contentious election cycles. And although I live in California, a left-leaning state, I teach students from across the state whose core beliefs fall all along the political spectrum. From day one, I explain to students that respecting different viewpoints—even when you don’t agree—is part of building maturity. Here are three ways I build a culture of respect in my classroom.

1. Set guidelines
At the start of each session, I provide several rules for students about how we will discuss upcoming topics. Students must respect their classmates’ opinions and offer constructive criticism. I also remind them that I may revoke chat privileges if they do not adhere to these class rules.…Read More

How to fight fake news

Twenty years ago, it was easier to identify fake news. There were the tabloid papers in the grocery store checkout line and the sensationalized “news” programs that promised inside looks at celebrity lives. Now, between the number of online information sites and the proliferation of social media apps, plus near constant mobile phone use, determining a story’s credibility seems to call for advanced detective skills.

In her edWebinar “Fight Fake News: Media Literacy for Students,” Tiffany Whitehead, school librarian for the Episcopal School of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, says that’s exactly what we need to teach students. While today’s youth may be aware that not everything on the internet is true, they don’t have the tools to evaluate accuracy and authenticity.

First, Whitehead says educators and students need to use the same definitions for the same terms, such as news literacy and fake news. Otherwise, any conversations could result in miscommunication. For her students, Whitehead uses definitions from the Center for News Literacy. More important than defining the words is how just discussing the definitions can engage students in reflective conversations. This is an opportunity for them to identify what they have seen and read online.…Read More

5 resources to help students with information literacy

Information literacy skills top many lists of must-have abilities, especially in the age of fake news. Not all results in a Google search are legitimate–but how many of today’s students know this?

Children have access to devices at younger ages, which underscores the importance of teaching them how to look at news with a critical eye and to evaluate the information’s origin. Because today’s students are growing up in an age where information is easily accessed, they need to know how to apply critical evaluation skills when met with information purporting to be truthful.

A 2017 Stanford University study determined that students from middle school through college were not able to distinguish between reliable news sources and sponsored content or advertising.…Read More

How to teach media literacy

Media literacy is more important today than ever. It is a critical skill for students of all ages, especially because teenagers spend an average of nine hours a day on media that doesn’t include schoolwork or homework. Educators must give students the tools and skills they need to decipher between reliable and unreliable sources of media. Susannah Moran, senior project manager at myON, presented tips for providing students with these important media literacy skills in “Teaching Media Literacy in the Classroom.”

The National Association for Media Literacy Education defines media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. According to ISTE, the elements of being a good citizen include, for the most part, many of the same components as being a good digital citizen: advocate for equal human rights, treat others with respect, work to make the world a better place, etc. However, digital citizenship in today’s world requires specific tools and strategies to be able to do these things.

When talking about access to tools, quality matters. Tools must be able to provide students with information that is current, reliable, non-partisan, and vetted. This criteria should serve as a model for students so that when they see something that doesn’t meet it, they can spot the difference. Students should be able to analyze and evaluate sources too.…Read More

How media literacy is critical to saving our democracy

[Editor’s note: This post by Alan November, written exclusively for eSchool Media, is part of a series of upcoming articles by this notable education thought leader. Check back on Monday, January 23rd for the next must-read post!]

“At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish. … If the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed.” —Stanford History Education Group, 2016.

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. 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.…Read More