Teachers, now that kids are online every hour of the waking day, how do we protect them from the virus of misinformation? A few quick tips. @SHEG_Stanford 1/13
Background: a friend who teaches in Seattle told me that the day before schools closed, one of his best students told him she didn't have to worry about the coronavirus. "Why," he asked. "Because it doesn't affect Black people," she said. 2/13
And indeed, there is it, all over the internet, in the form of memes, blog posts, & articles (I'm reluctant to post a link--why add fuel to the fire?). 3/13
How do we check this out without telling kids they have to become super fact-checkers or spend hours researching? Or, worse, lecture them about "critical thinking" (a term whose vagueness is outmatched only by the belief that it's the elixir for everything that ails education)?
We begin by telling them that before doing anything (like reposting, and risk being digital polluters), they should pause for a second (step one of @holden's SIFT model, hapgood.us/2019/05/12/sif…) 5/13
Second, they should spend a moment engaged in "lateral reading"--opening up another browser tab and using the power of the Web to quickly verify a claim (for more info on lateral reading, here's @johngreen's CrashCourse video on it ) 6/13
Third help your kids think like Google. Most haven't given thought to choosing the right key words. For this, I kept it real simple, "African Americans" and "Corona." But here's something most kids won't do. They'll enter the keywords in the regular Google window. I didn't. Why?
Because if it's something current, the Google news tab is a faster and more up-to-date source to check. Many people never even go there. 8/13 @dmrussell 
So now we see a source, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, with a current and prominent headline disputing the meme. But a new question arises: unless you are from Milwaukee odds are you and your kids have never heard of it. How do we know it's legit? 9/13
We could go to the site itself, but hey, this is exactly what a lot of fake & dubious "news" sources want us to do. And some of them "look" pretty darn legit. There's a quicker and better first move. Make sure you're sitting down for this one. 10/13
Wikipedia. Yup--a huge timesaver. Put "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" Wikipedia in your search bar and this is what comes up. 11/13
All of this took about 2 minutes. For those of you for whom it's new, it will take 4 minutes or maybe 6, until it becomes second nature. If we are going to stay digitally safe, it should become 2nd nature. (for more on the wise use of Wikipedia, see cor.stanford.edu/videos/how-to-…) 12/13
If this is new to you, hang in there, okay? It's a rough time. And don't assume that just because kids are facile with tech they know how to do this. Studies show most don't. wsj.com/articles/most-… 13/13
Postscript: My colleagues @SHEG_Stanford and I will be doing as many of these as we can over the next few days. We want to help everybody get through this, and will try to do our part. Thanks. . . and wash your hands.
