Developing Digital Detectives: Essential Lessons for Discerning Fact from Fiction in the 'Fake News' Era

by Darren Hudgins and Jennifer Lagarde

Book Overview

From the authors of the bestselling Fact vs. Fiction, this book offers easy-to-implement lessons to engage students in becoming media literacy "digital detectives," looking for clues, questioning motives, uncovering patterns, developing theories and, ultimately, delivering a verdict.

The current news landscape is driven by clicks, with every social media influencer, trained and citizen journalists chasing the same goal: a viral...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564849058
• ISBN13: 9781564849052
• Release Date: September 2021
• Publisher: International Society for Technology in Educa
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great idea, but has flaws.

The idea of this book is great, and I really liked that there is a companion website with ready-made resources and lessons that you can use. The downside is that many of the resources still require a lot of prep on your part, as far as finding news stories to use as a jumping off point. It would be nice if the activities had some pre-made scenarios to use that were made to be kid-friendly. The activities are for 4th grade through high school. However, some of the ones for 4th-5th grade seem a bit challenging, unless you are at a school where students tend to be on or above grade-level. I struggled to get through this book though, because from the very first page of the introduction, it is clear that the authors have a significant political bias and even make statements about political events that include misinformation. Its hard to take the book seriously when the authors themselves are guilty of the very thing they are preaching about not doing. In one of the better mini-lessons that I viewed (on the companion website), there were questions that implied you shouldn’t criticize climate change and you shouldn’t criticize gender transitioning children. Seeing as how there is plenty of evidence to support both of those criticisms, it again shows the bias of the content creators. The final nail in the coffin was the statement in the mini-lessons (from the companion website) that says “Note: fact checking websites (such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Washington Post Fact Checker, Snopes.com, Fact Check from Duke Reporters’ Lab, SciCheck, NPR FactCheck, or Hoax Slayer etc.), are often good resources for finding content that has been debunked or proven false.” How many times has Politifact rated something as false, only to admit the claim was true in their lengthy explanation? Way too many. It also became very tiresome to constantly read references to and excerpts from the authors’ previous book. It would be like 5-6 times in some chapters. Very redundant.