Answer to: How do you think we could empower our Colombian students to critically spot fake news?

In today's class we talked about what critical literacy was by Ira Shore. Following we read an article called "Fake news: improved critical literacy skills are key to telling fact from fiction." by Jonathan Douglas.

The first thing I will say we can do as future teachers to empower our Colombian students to critically spot fake news, is to teach through common sense. We need to spread the knowledge that they need to not believe straight away what they read or watch on internet. Also, that as they see how the social networks  behave is implicit that anyone can spread viral fake content and even if they read those fake news, they are the ones who will decide if that is true for them.

The second thing I will write about is related to what I.Shore said "When they lose touch with purpose in speaking or writing, they struggle to mobilize their inherent language competencies." Here we can read that if students do not take advantage of the tools they have around them to enhance their literacy skills and judge by themselves, they will be easily poisoned by the ignorance towards really and fiction in the words. Most students think that if something is written in a book or article on a newspaper it has to be a solid true. Which, in most of the cases can be a double blade sword.  

"...It helps children accurately understand and interpret information by making connections between what they read and what they already know, working out what is important, and spotting the difference between fact and fiction." (J.Douglas. 2017.) Relate to this I will write that probably due to the connections with social media students may be more used to be critical with what they encounter navigating the web. Sadly, most of them decide to start spreading intentionally or not this fake news which just hinders even more students critical thinking process.

Lastly, to say that a really good way to encourage students to spot fake news is to play with what they already know. Games such as true or false or even doing an exercise in class with a news realte to something they are interested in may be a great start.