Cutting Through the Hype: Media Literacy in President-Elect Trump’s Cabinet

Attribution-NonCommercial 

• CC BY-NC
• This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

High school history teacher Gabriel Swanger, who teaches in a suburban Boston public school has taken this opportunity in designing a robust, grading-intensive research project for his class.

Green Comma is pleased to distribute the lesson plan to teachers everywhere. Please honor the Open Education Resources code of honor if you share it with your colleagues. SEE ABOVE FOR  CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. 

********************************************************************************************
​
 From Green Comma: Fake news and the inability to distinguish fact from fiction might have affected the outcome of a presidential election; it certainly affects the knowledge of high school students across the country. We believe that media literacy is at a new threshold. 

This post is prompted by the following news report on National Public Radio: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Fall 2016 Freshmen Research Project (100 Points)
 
Assignment:                Explain the “hype” and then identify the truth surrounding some of Trump’s cabinet choices.  This is an individual project, although you may share resources with others.
 
Requirements:            A “process paper” that takes your reader through your journey from hype to truth, compares the two, and takes a stand on your assigned individual’s potential to serve his or her country.  Your process paper should be 3-5 pages long (double-spaced, 12-point font, etc).  You should have no fewer than 4 “hype” articles (2 per side), and 4 news articles.  Submit all your notes on NoodleTools. 
 
Steps to Success:  Researching

1. Identify the post to which your person has been nominated or appointed, then use the databases to get a quick understanding of what the job entails.

 

1. Find the hype
   1. Check out The Wall Street Journal’s “Red Feed, Blue Feed” to find some very liberal and very conservative sites
   2. Identify how far left and far right folks view this person

 

1. Start digging:  the truth is out there
   1. Source, find point of view, read closely, and corroborate.
   2. You must have no fewer than 5 articles total
   3. Use NoodleTools to take notes
   4. Document every step you take – really, everything.  Think about why you’re clicking a link, or doing a Google search, and write that down.  You’ll need this.

 

1. Make a decision:  fit to serve?
   1. Based on what you’ve found, is this person fit to serve?  Why?  Be able to point to your research to answer this question.
   2. When you think you’ve gotten to the bottom of the story, see Mr. Swanger

 
Steps to Success:  Your “Process Paper”

1. Your process paper is the story of your research.  In other words, walk your reader through the steps you took to get to the end of your research.  You’ve documented everything, right?  Now write it out.  Start from the beginning:
   1. Tell me the liberal and conservative “hype” (what was the story?)
   2. Analyze the “hype” sites you found
   3. Take me on a step-by-step description of how you determined the truth
      1. Remember:  source, find point of view, read closely, and corroborate.
   4. What is the “real story”?  In other words, what’s the truth about what this person has said, done, supported, given money to, worked with, worked for, etc?  How do you know this is the truth?

 

1. Compare and contrast the hype to the truth, and rate it (true, mostly true, mostly false, false)

 

1. Take a stand
   1. Give what you’ve found, is this person fit to serve?  Why or why not?
   2. This can be a list, but it needs to be detailed.  It should be the result of all the wonderfully sourced, contextualized, analyzed, and corroborated evidence you’ve reviewed in detail in your paper thus far

 

Resources, Links, and Nominees
 
Cabinet Members (as of 12/9/16):
 
Announced:

1. Betsy DeVos
2. Ben Carson
3. Jeff Sessions
4. Michael Flynn
5. Reince Priebus
6. Stephen Bannon
7. James Mattis
8. Scott Pruit
9. Andrew Puzder

 
 
In the running:

1. David Petreaus
2. Rudolph Guliani
3. Mitt Romney
4. Sarah Palin

 
Materials:

1. Use The Wall Street Journal’s “Red Feed, Blue Feed” to identify far left and right wing news sources

 

1. Read Guardian article “Bursting the Facebook Bubble”

 

1. Listen to Planet Money Podcast’s “Finding the Fake News King”

 

1. Read NPR’s “Stanford Study finds Students Most Vulnerable to Fake News”

 

1. Watch “Fact Checking is More Important than Ever”

 

1. Read KQED’s The Honest Truth about Fake News … and How Not to Fall for It (the handy “Breaking News Consumer’s Edition” which they included at the end of the article and I’ve included on the last page is originally from an eponymous piece on WNYC’s On The Media

 

1. The assignment rubric spreadsheet can be found here, and a print-friendly one is here

 

1. Ms. Rowse made an awesome library guide found here (there are links in the presentation)

 
 
Sample note format:
Each time you finish a step, ask yourself:

1. What did I just do?  Why?
2. What did I just learn?  Did it help?  Why?
3. What do I still need to learn?  Why?
4. What should I do next?  Why?

---