April 05, 2024
Highlighting the News Literacy Project
The News Literacy Project (NLP) is a nonpartisan education nonprofit whose goals are to build “a national movement to advance the practice of news literacy throughout American society, creating better informed, more engaged and more empowered individuals — and ultimately a stronger democracy.”
This resource is designed for anyone who is curious or concerned about misinformation in our news streams or wants to know how to recognize it, especially in light of the increasing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in news, photo, and video generation. It offers special resources for educators, especially K-12 educators.
Two resources created by the News Literacy Project worth checking out are their weekly newsletter The Sift Archive — News Literacy Project geared toward educators this newsletter provides discussion prompts and other teaching tools highlighting trends in news literacy, and a timely alerting service called RumorGuard from the News Literacy Project which debunks current viral postings. Mashable lauds RumorGuard as set apart from other fact-checking sites for going “beyond the simple debunk” to teach debunking skills.
Both of these NLP resources provide current examples for teaching and understanding news literacy as well as for staying personally informed. The News Literacy Project also offers a podcast series “Is that a fact?” with recent topics including “The lure of health and wellness information” and “Could lawsuits meant to curb disinformation hurt press freedoms?”
Whether you’re a newsie or an educator or just like to test your knowledge, NLP provides several news and information quizzes you can use to challenge yourself, your students, or your kids such as:
