Did you know that King Henry V111 had 6 cats? Towards the end of his reign he went slightly mad, and often asked the cats for advice. He told multiple sources that the cats were his number one advisors. Cats were seen as very powerful animals in the 1500s. He named each cat after one of his dead wives; Catherine Parr, Catherine Howard, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine of Aragon.
...Did I get you?? I hope most of you realized that whole paragraph was FAKE NEWS. That's right, I made it all up. I have no idea if King Henry VIII had any cats. He did have 6 wives though. Some of what I wrote was true, but not all of it. It was so easy for me to write that, it's scary. Anyone could write about any subject, and call it true. Some people would believe it if they didn't know anything about King Henry VIII.
So, how can we get our students to recognize fake news, if sometimes we ourselves can not?
There isn't really a definite answer. Because, like was said in class, fake news is changing all the time. The methods and ways that it is expressed change with the times. The best that we can do is teach students how to recognize it...while also teaching ourselves.
In my own English classroom one day, I would love to do a whole mini unit. I would start out with giving them an article(that's fake news), but I wouldn't tell them that it's fake. I would give them an assignment to do with it. Later, I would reveal the article's true nature, and watch the kids reactions. This is great to just get kids thinking about the fact that they're not thinking about it. If that makes any sense. A lot of students are not even aware that they believe everything that they read.
After teaching them what fake news is, and showing them some examples and websites, I would then have them create their own fake news. To prove to them how easy it is, for someone with no credibility, to do. Along with this, I would have them find one website that is credible, and one that is not. It's so important to just get kids thinking about fake news. For most of them it's not even on their radar.
More teachers need to make teaching about fake news a priority. Hopefully, if enough students become aware of the fake news that they are reading, the epidemic of it will die out. They will know all the signs to look for, and..."truth will out"! Or at least this is what I hope will happen :)
