.png)
.png)
By MaryKate Haverly, Digital ATDN
As adults navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, building media literacy and critical thinking skills becomes essential. For adult learners, understanding how to evaluate and interpret information is crucial for personal decision-making and community involvement. According to a study by Boston University, nearly three of four Americans (72%) surveyed say skills in media literacy are important in the face of intentionally misleading or inaccurate information in the media. While the importance of these skills is clear, the approach to integrating media literacy into lessons may feel overwhelming. However, with resources such as AllSides, media literacy, and critical thinking can be woven into every subject area, helping learners to engage critically with the information they encounter online, at work, and throughout their communities.
📌What is it?
AllSides is a news website designed to provide users with multiple viewpoints on current events, showcasing how different media outlets frame the same story across the political spectrum. AllSides helps users critically evaluate information, spot potential biases, and make informed judgments by offering news from the left, center, and right political perspectives. It also promotes deeper media literacy by encouraging learners to compare diverse angles on the same issues, helping them develop their viewpoints through critical thinking.
One fundamental goal of AllSides is for the reader to understand and identify the role media bias plays in the news and information they consume. Each article will identify an AllSides Media Bias Ratings and an AllSides Media Bias Chart to help make news bias transparent. This process enables the reader to identify different perspectives and political ideologies so they can have a comprehensive understanding and think for themselves.
Note: Some articles on AllSides may require a subscription to view the full story. For instance, articles from publications like Time and The New York Times are only available in part unless you subscribe to these outlets. Keep this in mind when selecting articles for your lessons.
🔑Why is it important?
Media literacy plays a vital role in adult education by providing learners with the skills they need to critically analyze and engage with the vast amount of information that they encounter daily. Like digital literacy, which enables learners to confidently use technology, media literacy empowers them to engage with digital content mindfully, ensuring that they don’t simply consume but actively evaluate the reliability and perspectives of what they’re reading or watching. With a continuous stream of politically charged news, the ability to identify credible news sources and identify bias has never been more important.
🎒What does it look like in the Classroom?
In the adult education classroom, media literacy can be seamlessly integrated into various activities, fostering critical thinking and enhancing digital skills simultaneously. One approach may be using news articles from AllSides to create lessons where learners analyze and compare different perspectives on the same topic. For example, students can examine how left-leaning, centrist, and right-leaning outlets report on a major news event. This encourages them to identify biases, understand framing techniques, and discuss the impact of media representation on public perception.
The concepts applied in this approach can extend beyond traditional media analysis to address challenges such as fake or misinformed news and AI-generated content. By developing critical thinking skills and an understanding of media bias, adult learners are better equipped to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, making informed decisions about the reliability and accuracy of the information they encounter.
In addition, the AllSides for Schools program provides educators with a free account to access their library of lesson plans, tools, and resources. One such lesson plan suggests that learners work in small groups to research a topic of interest using AllSides. They can present their findings to the class, not only discussing the content but also reflecting on how media bias affected the portrayal of their topic. This encourages collaborative learning and helps learners practice digital literacy by navigating different sources online.
Resources for Differentiating AllSides Content
The AllSides website curates news resources from across the country that are at various reading levels. Teachers who are looking to teach media literacy to lower-level learners or improve reading proficiency may find the resources listed below useful:
Diffit
Diffit is an AI-powered tool that helps teachers create differentiated resources for their students by allowing teachers to easily convert any content to any reading level. Therefore, teachers can convert the articles found on AllSides to a reading level appropriate for their learners, and/or utilize the leveled resources, assessments, vocabulary terms, or lesson resources for teaching topics such as media literacy, politics, civic engagement, and more.
As part of the free plan, educators can export the resources as a PDF file. Other formats are available based on what they feature, which cycles for free each month and include a variety of charts, activities, writing strategies, and more. These offer multiple opportunities to build an EdTech routine for your learners to practice and develop digital literacy skills.
💡Using Diffit With AllSides
To use AllSides with Diffit, educators can select a news article from AllSides on a relevant topic—such as a current event—and then use Diffit to adjust the reading level to match the needs of their learners. For instance, a teacher might choose an incoming hurricane on AllSides, convert it into three different reading levels using Diffit, and assign the appropriate version to each group of students. After reading, all students can participate in a class discussion or activity where they compare the different perspectives from left-leaning, centrist, and right-leaning sources. This ensures that learners of all literacy levels can engage meaningfully with the content while practicing media analysis skills.
Brisk Teaching
Brisk Teaching is a Google Chrome that integrates into your browser. While this extension offers many robust features, in the context of teaching media literacy and critical thinking, the extension could help educators find materials to suit learners with varying levels of understanding, such as lower literacy learners or those needing advanced skill development. With just a click, teachers can use Brisk Teaching to rewrite an internet-based article to change the reading level or even translate it to another language.
Additionally, for educators who work with students who have limited digital skills, Brisk Teaching can help teachers organize lessons in a way that introduces technology in a manageable and user-friendly way for adult learners. Brisk Teaching can create quizzes in Google Docs or Google Forms, identify vocabulary, or instantly create a Slides presentation on the article.
💡Using Brisk Teaching with AllSides
Educators can utilize Brisk Teaching to adapt news articles from AllSides using the extension to customize the content to suit different literacy levels and language needs. For example, a teacher might choose an article on the 2024 election and use Brisk Teaching to change the reading level for lower-level learners or translate it for non-native English speakers. Teachers could then create a Google Form quiz to assess comprehension or use the extension to generate a Slides presentation summarizing key points from left, center, and right perspectives. This streamlined process helps learners engage with complex content at an appropriate level while developing their media literacy and digital skills.
Kommentare