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A  few years ago I came home from a workshop at the University of Victoria on the topic of games for education (or gamification) and saw my son Matthew playing an interesting web-based game at our kitchen computer. Matthew appeared to be saving the world from the spread of disease. Having just been emersed in the ins and outs of game mechanics and game goals all day long, I looked over his shoulder to see if I could figure out the “mechanics” of the game he was playing. It didn’t take me long to realize that the game Pandemic was not about saving the world from disease, but the goal of the game was to engineer a biological weapon to overwhelm the world with disease! After getting over the shock of that realization, the truly interesting aspect of the game for me became how engaging it was for my son to play.

@ICTmagic

Jennifer Carey talks about how to teach students truth from fiction. Don't let students fall for fake news or use the term fake news in politics.

Fake news is a pretty sensitive topic. It gained a lot of steam around the time of the US election and it’s been plaguing many of us ever since.

How do you know whether the news story you just read is real? How do you avoid sharing stories specifically designed to fire you up and tap into your confirmation bias?

That’s what we’ll explore in this post! We’ll show you some techniques and share tips that will help you spot (and avoid!) fake news stories on Facebook.

Do students need to learn about fake news? And more generally, should they learn how news is created and how to evaluate its credibility?

Thousands of schools all over the world believe the answer is yes.

A few days ago we published on our Facebook page this beautiful visual featuring some interesting tips to help you spot fake news. The visual is created by IFLA and is available for free download in PDF format. If you are looking for other resources to help you teach students how to spot fake news, the visual below is a good material to add to your list. 

Young people need the skills to navigate the digital world, says the OECD's education director.

For those raised in the information age, life without the internet is no life at all. It is often a primary focus of a teen’s day (75% of teens are online several times per day) and an important means by which they communicate with the world and take in new information. While information can be found in various sources across the internet, an overwhelming majority of teens and pre-teens tend to gather their information from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. A 2015 report by the Media Insights Project found that the majority of surveyed Millennials (aged 18-34) cited Facebook as their sole or primary source of key news and other information.

Updated: Dec. 27, 3:15pm HST. FAKE NEWS!   It's time for all of us to step up our efforts to fight fake news. Yes, all of us