{"id":120504,"date":"2016-12-21T09:15:05","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T14:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=120504"},"modified":"2023-07-23T17:36:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T21:36:32","slug":"schools-key-to-solving-fake-news-problem-says-uconn-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/12\/schools-key-to-solving-fake-news-problem-says-uconn-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Schools Key to Solving Fake News Problem, Says UConn Expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"grey-sidebar floating-sidebar col-xs-12 col-sm-4\">\n  <br \/>\nDonald Leu holds the John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology and is director of the New Literacies Research Lab at UConn&#8217;s Neag School of Education.<br \/>\nHe is an international authority on literacy education, especially the new skills and strategies required to read, write, and learn with internet technologies, and the best instructional practices that prepare students for these new literacies. He is a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, past president of the Literacy Research Association, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association.<br \/>\nLeu&#8217;s areas of expertise include literacy and technology, reading education, and cognition and instruction. He is a frequent speaker at major conferences and has given keynote addresses in Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and North America; and this year delivered the Jeanne S. Chall Annual Lecture in Reading at Harvard University. <\/aside>\n<p><em>Fake news and questions about its role in the outcome of the 2016 election have thrust concerns about internet literacy to the forefront. It\u2019s an issue Neag School of Education professor Donald Leu has been studying \u00a0for years; and the findings of a 10-year-old study he led demonstrating the inadequacies of classroom instruction in \u201cnew literacies\u201d has been getting renewed attention. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The 2006 study, conducted by Leu and a team of researchers at Neag\u2019s New Literacies Research Lab, asked 25 seventh-graders attending middle schools across Connecticut to review a website devoted to a fictitious endangered species, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. The results were troubling. <\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>All 25 students fell for the internet hoax;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>All but one of the 25 rated the site \u201cvery credible;\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Most struggled when asked to produce proof \u2013 or even clues \u2013 that the website was false;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Some students vehemently insisted the tree octopus really exists.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>\u00a0More recent research by the lab shows that little has changed in the ensuing decade, and the rise of fake news and online misinformation has given new urgency to confronting the problem. To head it off, schools must move quickly to make internet literacy a priority if they are to provide students with skills needed to evaluate online information critically, Leu says. In a recent interview with UConn Today, Leu shared his thoughts on the fake news phenomenon and some steps schools can take. Here are a few highlights.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. Why is internet literacy so important?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.<\/strong> The internet is the most powerful tool we\u2019ve ever had available to us in our lives. It will enable us to do great things, but it also leads us to catastrophes if we\u2019re not careful. So we have to get on top of it in our schools to figure out appropriate policy and instruction. This business of fake news, that\u2019s the catastrophe we\u2019re headed for\u00a0<em>\u2013<\/em> if we\u2019re not already there. Facts matter, yet it\u2019s very easy for anyone to publish anything and they do. If we are going to take advantage of this incredible information source, we can go down one path or we can go down the other path. It\u2019s incumbent on all of us to support changes in schools that enable us to prepare a generation of students who can take full advantage of the information and not be swayed by falsehoods.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q.<\/strong> <strong>How does your Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus study inform what\u2019s going on now?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.<\/strong> It was over 10 years ago, and it was an attempt to try and highlight the nature of the problem. It\u2019s not the only study \u2013 there have been others, too \u2013 so we have wasted 10 years.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t necessarily like to use this term in public, but \u2026 we have a generation of digital natives who are also digital doofuses. They are natives when it comes to video, social networks, and texting, but they are doofuses when it comes to information. They do not know how to locate information or evaluate information, and they do not know how to communicate information in a richer context beyond text messaging.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q.<\/strong> <strong>What is the current state of instruction around online literacy in schools?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.<\/strong> It is hardly taught in schools. If you look at the reading standards, what we call the anchor standards\u00a0\u2013 the eight central standards that all the grade-level standards are derived from \u2013 the words &#8216;internet&#8217; or &#8216;digital&#8217; or &#8216;online&#8217; do not appear. And if you look at our assessments, our national assessment \u2013 the gold standard of reading assessments \u2013 it\u2019s all offline reading tasks.<\/p>\n<p>The basic problem is that our educational system has not been moving fast enough in this area. Library media specialists are being laid off. Those are the people who have the information and can share it with teachers, yet they are being laid off because they are seen as superfluous. These are people who know the online world and know how to teach critical evaluation skills, know how to teach kids how to locate things, but districts around the country are eliminating positions here to save money.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. Why is so little being done? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.<\/strong> There are so many reasons not to do this \u2013 the cost, the time, the lack of understanding, the tests that don\u2019t represent this because everyone is teaching to the tests now. So there are so many reasons not to do this, but ultimately I believe it\u2019s our schools that are the leverage point for solving this fake news problem. It\u2019s not just news, its fake facts. You\u2019ve got fake news, sure, but it\u2019s also false information. So how do you judge the reliability of that source? That\u2019s what we want our kids to be doing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. Has the fake news phenomenon changed the conversation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.<\/strong> Fake news has gotten everyone\u2019s attention. They understand it has consequences, and that we\u2019re seeing those consequences and we\u2019re seeing them now. But it\u2019s not just on the right, we have fake news on the left too, and the point is do you want a society that makes decisions based on facts not made-up stuff? So the light is shining now on that issue and providing some entry into the role schools can play, and it\u2019s hugely important.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. How can schools get up to speed in a way that&#8217;s effective and that counters this influence?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.<\/strong> There is no silver bullet. It\u2019s complicated. We need to attack it on a number of levels. We need assessments that include this and we need additional professional development. If I were going to invest in one thing, that\u2019s where I would invest \u2013 giving teachers the instructional tools they can use to teach kids to think critically about online information. Teacher education programs need to start paying attention to this issue. We need now, not 10 years from now, new teachers who are working this into the curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>People are paying attention to the fake news, but what we do in our schools is what\u2019s really important. That determines citizens who make thoughtful decisions at the ballot box, who are not swayed by propaganda or falsehoods on the right or left.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;If I were going to invest in one thing, that\u2019s where I would invest \u2013 giving teachers the instructional tools they can use to teach kids to think critically about online information.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":120518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2426,1855,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2021],"class_list":["post-120504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curriculum-instruction","category-neag","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 11:32:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120504"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120560,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120504\/revisions\/120560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/120518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120504"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=120504"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=120504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}