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giving a talk in 2006 to sixthgraders at his daughter’s
middle school in Bethesda,
Maryland. Two years later he
established the News Literacy
Project (NLP), a nonprofit
where he is president and CEO.
(Full disclosure, I am a director
of the Dow Jones Foundation,
which is a financial supporter
of NLP.)
Both organizations offer
courses in news literacy, with
the Center for News Literacy
initially targeting college
undergraduates and the News
Literacy Project focusing on
developing programs for
middle school and high school
students. Despite a growing
interest in news literacy among
educators and journalists,
only a small fraction of the
nation’s students have been
touched by these and other
programs to date. And there
is an on-going debate about
the long-term effectiveness
of such training and how to
measure it. In recent years, the
highly regarded Columbia
Journalism Review has
carried a number of detailed
articles and blogs on news
literacy.
Still, given the increasing
difficulty of discerning the
accuracy and value of news
and information online, news
literacy programs continue to
expand. Not surprisingly, the
programs are turning to digital
technology to reach more
people more quickly.
One of the
most ambitious
projects is NLP’s
development
of a “cutting
edge e-learning
Howard Scheider
platform” called
“Checkology” as a resource
for teachers that it hopes will
serve as its “primary path to
reaching national scale.”
This new tool, scheduled to
be available in early May,
will include four interactive
modules designed to enable
students to learn, according
to NLP, the following: how
journalists and consumers
filter news and information;
why the First Amendment and
free media are essential in a
democracy; the challenges and
opportunities created by the
new information ecosystem;
and, perhaps most important,
“how to know what to believe.”
The self-paced learning tool
is designed to accomplish
this in 10 lessons and about
12 instructional hours and
it is targeted at students in
the ninth and 10th grades. It
will be offered to educators
on a “freemium” basis that
provides basic access at no
cost. Premium features will be
offered to subscribers
The expanding efforts to
promote news literacy
are occurring against the
backdrop of this year’s
unusually raucous presidential
election, underscoring the
importance of being able to
distinguish between truth and
fiction as the Internet, social
media, cable news and talk
radio play an ever-greater role
in our politics.
If you aren’t already familiar
with the programs and
resources offered by the
Center for News Literacy and
the News Literacy Project, a
visit to their websites is a good
starting point.