Translator: Jordan Vartanoff Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
None of my ten- or eleven-year-old students are ordinary,
and Andy certainly wasn't either.
He was one of the most talented students I've had in my 23 years in education.
Before he entered my class,
the kid had built his own computer from salvaged parts.
He and I would have regular academic conversations after school
about world issues,
scientific breakthroughs,
and we'd debate as well.
With all that was going for Andy, he had troubles -
troubles connecting with his peers.
It was my goal to help him.
When I assigned Andy and a few other students
a research project around the age of the European exploration of the Americas,
I felt so confident that this would help him shine.
Students were to become explorers for a mock news conference
that would broadcast on Skype for other classrooms to watch.
I thought it might be a project
that could help him connect with his peers,
and I imagined that that online audience might even cheer with such vigor
that it would get Andy's classmates to look at him in a new light.
So picture my classroom:
33 ten- or eleven-year-old students split into two groups.
Some as reporters and others dressed up as famous Europeans
who explored the world in the 15-, 16- and 1700s.
Andy was amongst the group acting as explorers,
and he was ready to be interviewed.
His costume was a taped-on, black, paper beard.
His hat looked like it was from the Renaissance era.
His identity as Ferdinand Magellan,
credited with circumnavigating the globe even though he didn't make it himself,
was a secret to the rest of the students.
They needed to find out who he was through their questions.
Andy stepped to the microphone for his turn,
classes watching on Skype as well as the pretend reporters in my classroom,
and I just saw that in this ten-year-old's eyes
the world, his world, was bearing down on him.
He stepped up strong and said, "Are there any questions?"
The shouts from the reporters came from all around the room.
Andy raised his hand and pointed to one of the other students.
She quickly asked,
"What are you famous for exploring for, and when did you explore?"
Andy stopped and thought.
He answered,
"Well, I'm famous for circumnavigating the globe in 1972."
Some of the kids started to laugh.
Andy looked confused and lost.
Time and dates were not his strength.
I saw the pain on his face.
But to Andy's credit, he stood there with courage
and continued to answer the rest of the questions before he stepped down.
My heart broke.
During our next after-school chat,
I asked Andy, "Where did you find the information?"
"I googled it."
Of course.
As a teacher, my soul was pained, though, to see this effort that I was making
to try to connect him with his peers totally backfire.
Simply because I assumed too much.
To be transparent, that moment still haunts me to this day.
I know in my failure, I failed him,
and I pushed him further away from his classmates.
[7 Tests of Reliability]
While I may have given my students a checklist
that included seven tests of reliability,
such as "Is the information found on multiple sources, correct, and accurate?"
I didn't teach them what they needed.
I didn't teach them to have the ability to judge well.
Especially in this current era of false information and fake news.
Those of us who are parents or aunts or uncles,
or maybe you work with children or know children or work with adults,
you know that just because we teach something,
doesn't mean that the person actually knows how and when to apply that skill.
Did you know the term "fake news" has been around for a long time?
According to some sources, it's been around as long as 4500 years.
There are actually ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics
that talk about this very subject.
Historians also recognize that this exact phrase
was used in ancient China, Persia, and in early Anglo-Saxon culture.
More shocking, of course,
is that the actions taken to combat fake news in these early civilizations
were sometimes cruel: everything from exile, to torture, to death.
When you take a deeper look,
you realize that this is a problem
that has led to the downfall of cultures small and large.
What's even worse
is that the history that I just shared with you about the term "fake news"
was all fake - I made it up.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
You now may be entering a mindset
of skepticizing nearly everything that comes out of my mouth.
But this is a strategy I actually use with my students.
I want to keep them on their toes.
I want to keep them questioning.
I want to keep them thinking.
Like so many other educators I know,
I wanted knowledge and truth to be what my class was ultimately striving for.
Not for grades or marks.
Not to be skeptics.
Not to fear things.
I wanted them to question.
I wanted them to think.
It sounds simple, but in this time of the internet and artificial intelligence
taking over the task of remembering and answering questions for us,
it's almost becoming revolutionary.
So just how big is the problem
my students and others are facing in doing research online?
I'm not sure I could answer that.
But I can see that the words "fake news" have been on a rapid increase,
and during that same time, a word like "discernment,"
a powerful word meaning "to have the ability to judge well,"
has been on a steep, downward slide.
A strong example of this happened in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
You know the one, right?
[35,000,000 Shares of Social Media]
Researchers at Stanford University in Silicon Valley
showed that over 35,000,000 social media shares
occurred around unsubstantiated news stories.
Fake news is trending towards a critical and viral mass right now.
Let's break it down and examine just one of the infamous fake news stories.
This story about then U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump
and a highly-respected, global, religious leader
was shared, according to MSNBC,
on social media over 868,000 times.
Reports are that 62% of people
right now say they get their news from social media.
This is a problem.
All this came on the heels of the largest social media platform
removing all human element from identifying fake news
and turning it over to an algorithm to solve that growing problem.
I can tell you with confidence
that 100% of my students didn't contribute to those numbers.
And I'm pretty confident most children didn't either, right?
So, what did I do and what can we do
to deal with the explosion of false information and fake news?
Like many of the things that I do in my classroom,
I approached fake news in a completely opposite direction
rather than the traditional research-instruction method.
We were going to play with the concept of "real" and "fake."
So I created a game
combining the play-to-learn model with seven tests of reliability
that became a powerful learning experience for my students.
Before we played,
I wanted to test my class with some fake and true news.
(Laughter)
So, I was using stories I found on a news satire site like The Onion,
or mixed with reliable sources such as Newsela.
I tested their ability, and they had a tough time
identifying the difference between fake and true news.
Our next step was to have the students actually play
with the concept of finding or creating fake or true news stories themselves.
As you can imagine,
ten-year-olds found and created some of the most interesting articles.
Shunki, he found a story titled,
"Tourist From New Zealand Dies Taking an 'Alligator Selfie.'"
(Laughter)
It was a hit with the class,
and we discovered that it was actually fake.
Riah, she twisted a true story into a fake one called,
"The Ten Most Endangered Dog Breeds."
But she just threw in the ten most-common dog breeds.
Anderson, in my class, he got so good at creating fake news
that he also started editing photos to match that content, to trick everyone.
(Laughter)
This all helped us to see how easy it was to fool someone and create something,
especially when you're not thinking carefully.
We kept going with our learning, though,
and we connected with classrooms over Skype,
and we challenged each other
to test our ability at identifying fake and true news.
The kids loved playing this - so we kept playing.
I began to see them apply this to other content areas.
They would raise their hand and say
"Hey, Mr. Bedley, look at this! It's a fake news story!"
And they were able to explain it to me.
Still better, when I questioned them why did they know this was true or fake,
they were able to tell me why it was true.
So there I was, checking my email,
feeling very proud that my 33 students,
through play, not practice sheets or quizzes or tests,
were able to become skilled fact checkers and identifiers of true news.
And hopeful that I had created something
that could be shared out there in the world
to help other students as well, to not face what Andy had faced.
When I got an email.
You see, after the story of our class's effort to combat fake news
started to spread on National Public Radio in the United States,
as well as other news media sources,
we began receiving inquiries from across the U.S.
and, actually, around the world.
This email was from another media outlet
who wanted to share our journey with their audience.
But after agreeing, I found something odd.
Their news outlet wanted to share our story their way!
I was told in an email by the director
how my class would run our game when their camera crews came in
so they could get the right shots for their story.
I started to laugh, thinking of the irony of being told by the media
to fake how we do things in my classroom
so that they could tell the story about how my students spot fake news.
[Fake The Story About Fake News?]
I shared the email with my class and decided to let them choose:
Would we be recorded and change what we're doing?
Or should we stand strong?
Just a side note: kids really like being on TV.
(Laughter)
My student Gabe said it best, though,
"Mr. Bedley, wait, what?
Are they serious?"
I could see him thinking.
He said, "Is anything in the news real?
Is anything on the internet true?"
As a teacher, at that moment,
you're really proud of the ability of your ten- and eleven-year-old students
to have thought so critically about something at such a young age.
"There's got to be something true out there!"
Adam interjected into the conversation.
He grabs his computer, he starts searching for things that are true,
and then the other kids followed along after.
And they got it!
They made it!
They were now discerners of information rather than unconscious consumers.
Adam figured it out:
our approach needed to shift from being focused on what is fake,
to what is true.
In my class, students no longer accept facts at face value.
Nor does the class in Kansas that we play with regularly.
Nor do the other classes starting to play this game.
These students are becoming leaders in the movement to seek out truth.
Like them, we all need to become truth seekers
and not just dismissive and cynical and skeptic.
Imagine: children from around the world,
rather than being restricted from the internet,
becoming a vital element to help make this powerful tool better for us all.
Identifiers of real and true before their biases are too deep.
My next step: I'm launching a site for my students called "factcheck.us"
where my students at Eastwood Elementary School
can show their truth-seeking skills to the adults around the world.
It's a place where people will be able to go
and have my students and other students fact check for them,
before they post another fake news story on their social media account.
Again, "discernment" is defined as the ability to judge well.
It also implies that we're taking action.
It's a word not commonly used where I live.
"Wisdom," yes,
"knowledge," of course.
"Smart" and "intelligent" are frequently used.
But the word "discernment" seems to be missing from our vocabulary,
and at the same time, it seems that we may have lost the ability to judge well.
So let's commit today to find discernment.
So the next time you're in a classroom sitting with a child
or out enjoying a meal with friends at a café,
or maybe the next time you're scrolling through your social media,
let's just ask one simple question:
"How do I know this story is true?"
Let's listen to the video content with a discerning ear
before using the power of the single click.
Let's read beyond the clickbait headlines with a discerning eye
and judge the information carefully.
And let's be seekers of the truth, regardless of what we find.
Now you know my mission as a teacher,
and I'm asking you to join me on this mission.
Let's all become truth seekers.
Ďakujem.
(Applause)