Credible and Non-Credible Sources

My second workshop was with Rachel’s Grade 5 class.  I wanted to have a discussion with the students about credible and non-credible sites. 



This Google video was shared with the group.

To really get the message across, we worked on the following exercise;

Exercise: Two of these websites are news satire.  Two involve extreme bias based on the viewpoint of the source.  Two are from healthy news sources that generally are more centered or have not too much bias either way.  Identify them!   

Trudeau by the Numbers, They're Bad

Justin Trudeau UN speech hailed as ‘not Donald Trump’s UN speech’

Canada has spent $110,000 to avoid paying $6,000 for indigenous teen's orthodontics

Justin Trudeau is Deporting Illegal Immigrants…Hypocrite Much?

Justin Trudeau Unveils Plan To Meet Healthcare Needs Of Canada’s Aging Prog Rockers

Ukraine and Google playing Justin Trudeau's 'sock game'

Tips for searching the web to ensure you are using legitimate sites for research and news articles:

Where - Where is the content published?

Who - Look for an author at the beginning or end of the text. Try and find out a bit more about the author if time allows.

What - What kind of website is it? Business? News? Personal Blog? Entertainment? What is the purpose of the site? What is the point of view of this website? Is it biased? Unbalanced?

When - Look for a publication date.

I urge students to use mediabiasfactcheck.com/

If a source has extreme bias or is biased completely to the left or right, it is not
a great source for your news research. 

If a source is more to the center, even if that means “left-center” or
“right-center”, then it is safe to use; Even the CBC is considered a bit left-center!

It was really interesting to observe just how much of a challenge it is for students to identify fake news.  I am looking forward to doing more work with students on this topic.