Prepared by Sam Wineburg, August 14, 2020

@samwineburg

Digital Hacks 1

Disclaimer : This advice does not guarantee foolproof web searching. It does make the promise that if you follow it, you will make fewer bonehead errors and arrive at be�er, more reliable informa�on.

1) Read Laterally : Have you landed on an unfamiliar page or an organiza�on you don’t know or a meme that could be true but you’re not sure? Read Laterally. The Web’s a web! You understand a node in a connected network by understanding its rela�onship to other nodes. This one strategy will cut your error rate by a whopping 25% ( … or maybe 30% or 27%, in any case, a substan�al amount!).

2) Prac�ce Click Restraint : Don’t be a promiscuous clicker and click on the first search result. Step back from the “SERP” (insider talk for “Search Engine Results Page”). Scan the snippets, the brief sentences underneath the URL. Look for sources you recognize and make a wise first choice.

3) Make friends with Wikipedia . So many errors could be eliminated just by checking what Wikipedia says about an organiza�on or some so-called “expert.” Scan Wikipedia’s entry but then dart to the references at the bo�om. Look for sources you recognize.

4) Use the other 99% of Google . Breaking news: “Jennifer Lawrence eaten by an alligator!” Go first to Google News rather than doing a general Google search. If CNN, NBC, Fox, Vox or Vice haven’t said anything, it’s probably a hoax. As for a claim by a world famous medical researcher—“Cu�ng Your Hair Prevents Corona!”—look that person up in “ Google Scholar .” If this “famous” researcher” has no scien�fic papers to her credit, hoist a red card.

5) Snopes is a reliable site for debunking conspiracy theories. Use it. 6) Don’t reinvent the wheel. Check out the research-tested lesson plans at

cor.stanford.edu. Look at the YouTube videos of John Greene’s Crash Course , Naviga�ng Digital Informa�on (full disclosure: we wrote the syllabus). See Mike Caulfield’s excellent and free online guide, Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers .

7) Be wary of approaches to digital literacy packed to the brim with lists of ques�ons . Be just as skep�cal about an organiza�on’s “About” page as you are about an friend’s Instagram feed. As for the advice that a .org is more trustworthy than a .com? Forget it. Scores of hate groups are .orgs. The .org domain is an open domain—pay the fee and you, your cousin, and your golden retriever can get one too.

1 “Hack”: jargon for tricks that circumvent a lot of bs & allow you to do something quickly & efficiently.

How to Find Us sheg.stanford.edu

cor.stanford.edu

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Sam Wineburg, wineburg@stanford.edu Twitter @samwineburg

Reading like a Historian Curriculum https://sheg.stanford.edu Beyond the Bubble Assessments https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-assessments Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum, supported by Google.org http://cor.stanford.edu Curriculum Evaluation Report https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:xr124mv4805/COR%20Curriculum%20Evaluation.pdf What COR looks like in classrooms (4 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w6sb3DFhGw&t=11s YouTube video lecture (30 minutes), Why We Need a New Kind of Media Literacy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmpoPoUgsAc&t=1s New York Times The Scandal of .Org https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/dot-org-domain.html Original 2016 Study of ~8000 students

WSJ report on Stanford Study https://www.wsj.com/articles/most-students-dont-know-when-news-is-fake-stanford-study-finds-1479752576 Executive Summary https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:fv751yt5934/SHEG%20Evaluating%20Information%20Online.pdf American Educator cover article https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/ae_fall2017_mcgrew.pdf https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/ae_fall2017_colglazier.pdf (Will Colglazier, Teen Vogue) How a Teacher Helps Students Survive the Internet https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-best-tips-for-spotting-fake-news-in-the-age-of-trump BBC podcast, “You Can Handle the Truth” https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csxgn3 Examples of Assessments: see: http://sheg.stanford.edu

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2019 Follow-up Study (Hewlett Report) Representative Sample Washington Post article about the study https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/you-cant-believe-everything-you-read-online-many-students-dont-seem-to-know-that/2019/11/17/06a171f2-0670-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html Quartz (a) https://qz.com/1750839/most-young-2020-us-election-voters-cant-spot-fake-news/ Quartz (b) https://qz.com/1752880/how-to-talk-to-your-grandparents-about-fake-news/ Stanford Press Release with link to full report https://news.stanford.edu/2019/11/18/high-school-students-unequipped-spot-fake-news/

Intervention Studies Showing We Can ‘Move the Needle’ (2019) Chronicle of Higher Education: “Students fall for information online. Is Teaching them to Read Like Fact Checkers the Solution? https://www.chronicle.com/article/Students-Fall-for/246190/#.XMLrNI8pkrE.twitter

(2019) Original Research Report with college students British Journal of Educational Psychology https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjep.12279 (2019) Research report on intervention study in high school classrooms in California “Learning to evaluate: An Intervention in Civic Online Reasoning”, Computers & Education, Sarah McGrew https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103711 https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360131519302647 (2020, Feb. 20). New York Times, “These Students are Learning About Fake News and How to Spot It,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/education/learning/news-literacy-2016-election.html?referringSource=articleShare

Fact Checkers Research

Time Magazine http://time.com/5362183/the-real-fake-news-crisis/ Stanford’s Press Release https://news.stanford.edu/2017/10/24/fact-checkers-outperform-historians-evaluating-online-information/ Laura Owen’s summary at Nieman Lab https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/10/even-smart-people-are-shockingly-bad-at-analyzing-sources-online-this-might-be-an-actual-solution/ Harvard’s Usable Knowledge’s great little ‘cheat sheet’ https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/18/06/digital-native-digital-expert Research Report in Teachers College Record https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:yk133ht8603/Wineburg%20McGrew_Lateral%20Reading%20and%20the%20Nature%20of%20Expertise.pdf More complete version of the same research report posted on SSRN

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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3048994 Feature article in Quartz https://qz.com/1533747/in-the-age-of-fake-news-heres-how-schools-are-teaching-kids-to-think-like-fact-checkers/ Teaching Column, “Fighting Fake News,” Chronicle of Higher Education https://www-chronicle-com.stanford.idm.oclc.org/article/One-Way-to-Fight-Fake-News/241726?cid=at&elq=7e4d639cea7b4419bd56c4e5ac83d80a&elqCampaignId=7167&elqTrackId=c1b4c6be7d7c4cdfb9f01efe99c89510&elqaid=16543&elqat=1&utm_medium=en&utm_source=at

Dan Willingham’s Science and Education Blog http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/archives/10-2017

Problems with “Checklists” http://www.kappanonline.org/breakstone-need-new-approach-teaching-digital-literacy/

Connection between History/Social Studies and Civic Online Reasoning https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53123/how-to-teach-students-historical-inquiry-through-media-literacy-and-critical-thinking

Collaboration with Google.org Stanford Press Release https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-education-scholars-create-resources-help-young-people-spot-fake-information-online YouTube Video of presentation in London at Google’s Digital Literacy Summit https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwHMjnRFvKtGrWjrMqZXcgvHFlW News article on the collaboration https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/poynter-part-of-3-million-google-grant-to-improve-teen-digital-literacy_166560409 The Incomparable John Green’s Crash Course, with a curriculum developed by Stanford History Education Group (this is about Lateral Reading, but see the whole series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQG6Tin-1E&t=1s

OP-EDS New York Times: The Meaninglessness of .ORG https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/dot-org-domain.html TIME Magazine (“How to Spot Coronavirus Misinformation) https://time.com/5803936/coronavirus-misinformation/ Pacific Standard: A Different Kind of Media Literacy for Gen Z https://psmag.com/ideas/how-we-can-teach-gen-z-a-better-kind-of-media-literacy USAToday Cri de Coeur https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/12/internet-confusion-rethink-education-digital-sputnik-moment-column/2769781002/ Huffington Post, More than ‘Critical Thinking’ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-fake-news-web-literacy-propaganda-fact-checkers_n_5c1812f5e4b0432554c332e3 Washington Post We Need a New Kind of Media Literacy

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/10/01/why-californias-new-media-literacy-law-schools-could-backfire/?utm_term=.36198174f8ac EDWEEK Sam/Sarah’s Original 2016 Op-Ed (originally published in EDWEEK), ~60K Facebook shares https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/column-students-cant-google-way-truth

Latest work on History Assessment Research report in Journal of American History

https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/104/4/983/4932611 Op-ed based on the above article https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/104/4/983/4932611