Hello Info Investigators!
This email contains information on the following:
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Artificial Intelligence and the spread of misinformation
I thought this month we could focus on the role of AI in the digital landscape. The Artificial Intelligence we now have is generative – meaning that it can create new content. Often our students are interacting with this content on social media. In this week’s SIFT newsletter from NLP they shared the following resources and activity ideas you can use in your classrooms to help your students understand the problems with AI generated content and how they can detect it:
AI-generated images posted to Instagram, Facebook and Threads will be labeled by Meta, the company that owns all three social media platforms, in the coming months. The company hopes the labels will help curb the spread of disinformation during an election year, but not every AI-generated image posted on Meta’s platforms will be labeled — only images that contain watermarks or metadata added by AI image generators such as Midjourney or DALL-E.
The company says it’s working on tools to automatically detect AI content, but in the meantime will rely on users to disclose when something they post is AI-generated if it isn’t automatically flagged.
o Infographic: “6 things to know about AI” (NLP’s Resource Library).
o “Misinformation” (Checkology virtual library).
o “Meta’s Nick Clegg on the challenges of AI content and misinformation” (PBS NewsHour).
o “This deepfake surfaced in a tight mayoral race. It’s just the beginning” (Donie O’Sullivan, CNN).
o “AI-generated voices in robocalls can deceive voters. The FCC just made them illegal” (Ali Swenson, The Associated Press).
Also a few months ago NLP did a webinar with USBE about AI’s Impact. You can view the recording here and here are the slides.
As AI continues to develop and change, I find it comforting that companies are actively trying to help detect AI in order to help readers know and make their own conclusions on the validity of the information being shared. We saw this during the Covid-19 Pandemic with disclaimers on social media posts when people would talk about Covid. As with all information we see online – AI generated or not – we need to use the skills we learned when encountering new information – Stop, check our emotions, get curious and ask questions, laterally read, and determine the motive behind the information.
Upcoming Webinars:
Happy Investigating!
Information Investigators!
This email contains information about the following:
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We hope that over the past month, you have been able to introduce your students to information literacy and have started integrating some of the tools and skills you learned last year. To support you with this, we have the following resources.
Checkology Course
The News Literacy Project has worked with us to create a set of Checkology courses that you can do with your students. They include: Info Zones, Misinformation, and Is it Legit? To help you get started, sign up for Checkology if you haven’t already and create a course. To help with this, please see the following resources:
We are encouraging you to give at least 1 lesson in the next month.
Upcoming Webinars with the News Literacy Project and USBE
October 12th – AI’s Impact on Misinformation and the Digital Landscape – Register HERE
November 9th – Google Like a Pro – Register HERE
Copyleaks – Bite-Sized PD
If you haven’t tried the new plagiarism detection software we have in Canvas, check out this bite-sized PD from September 13th on all of the features of Copyleaks.
Examples of current disinformation in the media
Don’t forget that some of the best examples will come from our own social media news feeds. Below is an example of a photograph – is it real? Or has it been doctored? You can teach students how look closer and use Google every time they see something that is probably too good to be true. These are great examples to also reinforce Triggers and Motives.
(Yes, Lesli is a Swifty and she just watched the Kelce documentary and the algorithm knows it. Notice how the posts say “Suggested for you.”)
Information Investigators –
As continued support for your efforts in information literacy, November’s Information Investigators monthly email contains two items and multiple resources to help you in that endeavor.
Civic Online Reasoning (COR) Curriculum:
The Sift:
Lastly, a big shout out to the information literacy team and you, the first cohort (that is all of you) of Information Investigators! Canyons’ Information Investigators professional development series is the topic of News Literacy Project’s recent article. In it, Davina Sauthoff, USBE Library Media Specialist said, “I love how Canyons is building the capacity of information literacy skills with all educators, not just librarians or ELA teachers”…“It’s a unique model to intentionally include all content area teachers from kindergarten through high school. I’m very excited about that.”
We are very excited about your learning and continued efforts to teach students these life-saving skills.
Greetings, fabulous investigators!
Ready for another round of intellectual adventures? In this month’s Information Investigators newsletter, we’re serving up a smooth blend of nostalgia with a quick recap of last year’s thoughtful highlights. We’ve also sprinkled in some fresh resources and exciting opportunities to turbocharge your quest for knowledge. Get ready to dazzle those classrooms with an upgraded dose of information literacy wizardry!
A year ago, we were focused on three key components of the Access Lens where we considered how the devices through which we consume information affect our ability to determine that information’s credibility.
These key components, framed as guiding questions, are as such:
Framing our thinking through the lens of Pesce’s quote, “First we shape our tools, thereafter our tools shape us.”, we assessed how the access lens might not only affect our consumption of information, but also how we can support our students in determining how the access lens might support theirs.
Excerpts from some of your good thinking around this included:
“The people developing the web know this and feed me the things they see me interested in. This keeps me coming back again and again. They have done this so well that people are merely feet away from their phones all day and all night.”
“It’s undeniable that filter bubbles, along with our own online behavior, become essentially an echo chamber where what we already believe to be true is corroborated over and over again.”
“The hope in the idea that our “tools shape us” is that by becoming more aware of that relationship, we can be more thoughtful in how we are using the digital tools that are developed.”
We’d love to hear back from you on how you’ve implemented these concepts of access with your students and to hear about their reactions and a-ha moments.
If you’re interested in taking your learning to the next level, consider checking out the following free events for educators and students during National News Literacy Week at the News Literacy Project:
Big kudos for being the info maestro in your classroom! Your dedication to unleashing the power of knowledge is truly commendable. Got queries, crave support, or hungry for more brain-boosting tools? Don’t be shy – hit us up! We’re the sidekicks to your information literacy superhero journey.
Information Investigators –
This year we would like to continue to support your efforts in information literacy through monthly emails. This email contains four items to help you in that endeavor.
1. Developing Digital Detectives by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins was one of the foundational pieces we used last year in Information Investigators.
Starting the year off with the trigger lens is essential. Remember, learning how “information is designed to trigger an emotional response and how those responses then drive our behavior online” is an essential skill for our students (pg. xvii).
2. Additionally, one of the resources they provided in Digital Detectives is the Evidence Locker. We would like to encourage you to revisit the Evidence Locker and utilize their resources.
3. News Literacy Project Webinars sponsored by USBE –
4. Information Investigators Cohort #2, 2023-2024
Thank you for your continued efforts to share resources, tools, skills, and information surrounding information literacy with your students. If you have any questions or need additional support or resources please feel free to reach out.
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