Looking for new ways to teach news literacy? Check out these programs

by Chi-an Chang

Looking for ways to engage your students and make them excited about news literacy? Or just curious what kind of literacy education is out there? Here are five programs that have been successful in educating students on the importance of verifying information and making it fun at the same time!

1. Center for News Literacy

The Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism offers a wealth of resources from lecture series featuring journalists talking about their work and bringing news literacy to life to curriculum materials for high schools and the general public through the Digital Resource Center.

Apart from offering news literacy programs to students, teachers can also apply to attend a News Literacy Summer Institute and learn the full ,14-week News Literacy curriculum as well as tools to build materials that align with the new Common Core Standards.

The Center also hosts the News Literacy Leaders Conference.

In 2013, the conference invited educators experienced in applying news literacy skills in the classroom to present on topics ranging from using to and in .

The are all available online.

2. The News Literacy Project

The News Literacy Project is an educational program that gives instructors the resources they need to incorporate news literacy into their programs by providing reference materials, expert guest speakers and instructor coaching. The resources are offered at no cost.

The program has partnerships with 22 news organizations and works with seasoned journalists to help middle school and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age.

3. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

The nonprofit journalism organization, which is dedicated to underreported topics, offers education through its Global Gateway program. Geared toward middle and high school students, the program brings journalists to classrooms across the country to discuss underreported issues to students on topics such as Population, Food Insecurity, Water, Maternal Mortality, Women and Children in Crisis, Climate Change, Fragile States, and HIV/AIDS. Each topic represents a subject area with deep reporting resources upon which the Pulitzer Center will continue to build.

Educators can explore connections between the center’s reporting and their curriculum by searching the center’s reporting by educational subject area, meeting the  journalists, browsing the Gateways, or exploring the lesson plans.

Face-to-Face: Conversations with Journalists

The program at Florida Gulf Coast University gives students the chance to speak with journalists, newsmakers, bloggers and war correspondents in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America via Skype. Students learn about the power of reliable information and the challenges of finding it.

There are on-demand video replays of these sessions which include journalists such as Larry C. Price, a two-time Pulitzer winner who has covered crisis in Africa and Central America, to Louisa Lim, NPR’s correspondent in Beijing who made a very rare reporting trip to North Korea. You can enroll in the archived replays of the conversations at Poynter NewsU for a small fee.

Want to incorporate a similar program in your classroom? Check out 3 tips for teaching news literacy.

4. News Literacy in a Digital Age

The program at Emory University is one of only 25 universities nationwide offering all undergraduates the opportunity to become news literate. Apart from traditional lectures that teach university students how to access and evaluate news, the program also offers the chance for university students to share news literacy skills with high school students–connecting the university’s expertise and resources with community needs.

Watch Sissel McCarthy talk about the service learning project:

 from .

Categories: Just for Journos, News & Updates, Tips for Teachers