Misinformation and disinformation about science have reached alarming levels. Here, we summarize a recent expert report, "Science Education in an Age of Misinformation," that outlines what science education can do to address this problem and, given the urgency, has to do. We highlight the significance of teaching how the social practices…

Teachers need new instructional strategies and systemwide support to educate students about the threats that racism, hyper-partisanship, and disinformation pose to democracy. Nicole Mirra, Sarah McGrew, Joseph Kahne, Antero Godina Garcia, and Brendesha Tynes explore the three major elements of digital citizenship education -- safety and civility,…

People of all ages have difficulty interpreting the information they read online. The contemporary media environment grants the public access to an unprecedented amount of information, and virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a better understanding of that technology and students' utilization of such tools. It is widely…

For teachers and librarians helping students navigate the world of online information, the rise of fake news has created new challenges for information literacy instruction. Helping students find, evaluate, and use credible sources of online information can be more difficult than ever in the current era of "fake news", "alternative…

In recent years--and especially since the 2016 presidential election--numerous media organizations, newspapers, and policy advocates have made efforts to help Americans become more careful consumers of the information they see online. In K-12 and higher education, the main approach has been to provide students with checklists they can use to…

The changes in the online information landscape, the divisive nature of political life, and the growing distrust in democratic institutions have all contributed to the increasing circulation of misinformation. These dynamics have made assessing the credibility of information challenging for youth and adults alike. While we have much to learn,…

The "elaborate systems of communication" that historian Christopher Lasch observed nearly three decades ago have intensified in complexity and scope. The explosion of the Internet and wireless technologies has resulted in a dizzying proliferation of texts. Teachers and students are but a keystroke or mouse click away from a limitless stream of…

In this dizzying world of click-and-go wikified information, everyone uses fast-and-frugal skimming strategies to evaluate information daily. The challenge is to teach students to devise accurate rules that take advantage of new technology to quickly judge the quality of the information they want to use. The author suggests several digital reading…

Increasingly, young people are interacting with information from a range of complex online sources (e.g., images, videos, websites, etc.) that inform them about content that is typically part of social studies. This makes helping students learn to become skilled careful and critical readers of all texts (from textbooks, trade books, magazines, and…

The very nature of information seeking in today's world suggests that credibility is an important factor in how one goes about seeking and using information. The proliferation of Web-based resources and the ability for nearly anyone to publish on the Web force individuals to make judgments of quality and authority as they flow on- and offline in…

Feminist nonprofit organizations are sites of informal and nonformal learning where citizens learn advocacy, literacy, and the practices of social democracy. With the growing use of information and communication technologies in the nonprofit sector, there are questions as to how well organizations are able to make use of this technology to further…

Concerns about children's online safety have evolved from protecting them to focusing on encouraging positive social norms, transmitting effective skills, and encouraging students to be helpful allies. In fact, federal law now requires schools that receive funding to educate students about cyber safety. Nancy Willard integrates her expertise in…

This article introduces a framework designed to improve students' awareness of the need to critically evaluate websites as sources of information and to improve their skill at doing so. The framework, called the WWWDOT framework, encourages students to think about at least six dimensions when evaluating a website: (1) Who wrote this and what…

When Nickie Dobo wrote a column in 2003 for her college newspaper--"The Daily Collegian" at Pennsylvania State University--decrying the "hook-up culture" on the campus, she never expected it to resurface years later in an attack on her professional credibility. But that's what happened when Ms. Dobo, now a reporter for the…

With the rapid increase in information freely and easily accessible on the web to those who have access to a computer and the internet, there seems to be a corresponding decrease in critical evaluation of the sources of this information. All sources are taken to be sources of information and seem to be uncritically considered to contain reliable,…