Stanford’s research focused on 7,800 students in 12 states and covered grades from middle school through college. The results revealed the students’ overall lack of understanding on how to find the sources for the information they were reading, and to determine if those sources are credible and unbiased. Stanford’s report summary states, "Our 'digital natives' may be able to flit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped."
Addressing the issues defined in the Stanford report should be a good opportunity for school librarians to partner with classroom teachers to develop and deliver media literacy lessons. But with a declining number of librarians in schools and the increased demands on teachers to cover prescribed curricular content, offering such lessons may get overlooked. So how can schools address the media literacy skills of their students?
For those schools without a librarian, or schools that wish to go further than just offering a few well-designed lessons, there are good choices to consider.
Middle and high school teachers who want to include media literacy in their courses can find some promising new curricular materials in development by the Stanford History Education Group. Additionally, the iKeepSafe organization has partnered with Google to develop a digital literacy and citizenship curriculum that includes "Become an Online Sleuth" lessons for middle school, and the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University offers a free, semester-long "News Literacy" course curriculum well-suited for high schools.
Recognizing the importance of media literacy skills for students, a recent Slate article describes how some schools are also now offering full media literacy courses or including it in their history or civics courses.
In my perfect world, a revised civics course that includes both media literacy and digital citizenship would be added as a high school graduation requirement. In addition to covering some traditional civics curricula, these courses can help develop students’ skills to access quality information sources and to evaluate and analyze the information for bias and accuracy. The courses can also teach students to ethically and legally create and publish their own content. The Stanford research reveals just how deficient most students’ skills are in these areas.
With the growth of online media, the words of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan — "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts" — have never been truer. Coaxing people to believe that tree-dwelling octopi occupy rainforests of the Pacific Northwest is harmless fun. But we are also seeing more troubling examples of how gullible people react to specious online information. Offering a strong media literacy curricula in our schools is a much-needed first step in addressing this growing issue.
