How to Teach Media and News Literacy with Ebonee Rice

In which Dan talks with Ebonee Rice (@EboneeSpeaks), Senior VP of Educator Network at the News Literacy Project. They talk about the unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips, the danger of passive media consumption, the importance of understanding how news gets made, and the incredible work of the News Literacy Project. 

Mentioned in the show:
Why do people claim things that can be easily disproven with a Google search?
Truth Decay, The RAND Corporation's insightful take on media literacy
Can you spot fake news before hitting “share”? Kids are learning and so can you by Fast Company
The News Literacy Project -- Start here for some amazing resources
Checkology, NewLitPro's flagship platform
NewsLit Nation, a fantastic group to join

Music:
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Music provided by Audio Library Plus
Watch: https://youtu.be/dG1U3NuR9Pk
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

And the urgent moment that we're living in. And I think 2020 was just like the perfect example of that. Like we just came out of what was the perfect storm to create a lot of misinformation, a lot of disinformation, a lot of confusion, a lot of fear. And when you have all of these things, when you have a global pandemic, when you have a racial uprising, when you have a contentious election, there's just it's it's just all of the ingredients to create everything we're seeing now. So I don't find those types of things surprising.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

In previous episodes, I've talked to Carrie Redding, Joel Westheimer, and Chris McNutt about this essential skill set and why education has been so slow to adopt it. Last year, the RAN Corporation bluntly stated the consequences of our complex media landscape and a populace unprepared for it. It has led to, quote, the erosion of civil discourse, political paralysis, alienation and disengagement of individuals from political and civic institutions, and uncertainty over national policy, close quote. Today, my guest is from one of the most important educational organizations out there working on improving this situation.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

My name is Ebony Rice. I am the senior vice president of the Educator Network at the News Literacy Project. And my work really focuses on mobilizing and engaging educators toward news literacy education.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Okay, full disclosure. I invited Ebony on the show because I am a user and an unabashed fan of the news literacy project. Its library of free resources is unmatched. And as you'll hear Ebony and I discuss in the interview, their flagship resource is an interactive platform called Czechology. It's really one of the best I've ever used. My students love it. They're super engaged, and they're actually bummed when we uh finish up using Czechology. I hope you take away from this conversation how essential media and news literacy has become and why the news literacy project should be your first stop. The thing is, media literacy and news literacy, these aren't things that you do in addition to your curriculum. They can be easily integrated into what you're already teaching, making them impactful and relevant. Check out the show notes for links to everything we discussed in this conversation. Okay. Here's Ebony Rice. I want to thank you, Ebony, so much for joining me, and I want to get into all the projects that your uh you and your team are doing. Uh last year, the World Health Organization, along with the United Nations, put out a joint statement calling on member states to develop and implement action plans to manage the infodemic that we are going through and to prevent the spread and to combat myths and disinformation. What does infodemic mean? What do you think they were saying when they used that word?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Well, a number of things. One is we know that we live in the most complicated, complicated information landscape in human history. And so students, young people are inheriting that. And so we know that it's getting more complicated, it's getting more confusing, and it's just getting more difficult to navigate. And so when you hear things like infodemic, we understand those terms to simply mean that we are in a situation where news literacy is critical. News literacy is more important than it's ever been. And it seems like our work is really kind of at the cornerstone of that issue if we want to preserve our democracy. It's making sure that students have the sensibilities and capabilities to think critically about the world around them.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

I completely agree. And I thought for a long time that actually media and news literacy is a big blind spot for education. It's not something that we've stressed. I'm curious, what is your reaction, your intellectual, emotional reaction when you see the frequent uh viral videos of people, uh, whether it's at a protest or maybe at a public forum, repeating, sometimes screaming, uh easily disproven falsehoods. Uh things that a quick Google search could disprove but yet are shared rapidly and then are are um brought up in these public forums. What are you what's your reaction when you see these videos?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

I think it reaffirms the work that we do at the News Literacy Project. Um, I think it reaffirms our purpose and the reason why we exist, um, which is to empower teachers to then teach students how to be news literate, how to be news literate. And we believe that that is a solution to creating a more informed and equitable citizenry. And so when I see things like that, when I watch video clips on my social media newsfeeds, uh, when I'm seeing things in the news or on YouTube, what have you, it makes me understand and even the urgent moment that we're living in. And I think 2020 was just like the perfect example of that. Like we just came out of what was the perfect storm uh to create a lot of misinformation, a lot of disinformation, a lot of confusion, a lot of fear. Um, when you have all of these things, when you have a global pandemic, when you have a racial uprising, when you have a contentious election, there's just it's it's just all of the ingredients to create everything we're seeing now. So I don't find those types of things surprising. I don't um think that uh people are acting out of anything except for just a sheer like not understanding sometimes. And um again, all of those things just reaffirms the work that we do and reminds me that we really need to be teaching people how to think critically about the things that they're seeing, the things that they're sharing, the things that they're um processing and then kind of putting out into the world around their dinner tables or on their social media newsfeeds, what have you, but all of the information and the content that people are ingesting right now, and it's a lot of it, um, to be mindful of how we're then taking that information, understanding that information, and sharing that information. And I think this moment is just the most critical moment. If we don't do this now, there's an urgent need. And uh, my colleague Peter Adams um says, and I agree with it, that we are putting students at a civic disadvantage if we don't teach them news literacy. And we can see how that is manifesting in the world that we live in now. Um, and so I just think, again, when when I see these things and when I hear certain things that I hear every single day, it just reaffirms the work and lets me know that we're on the right path.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

I think that's a great point you brought up about the motivation behind a lot of it. I know the American Psychology Association, they wrote something recently about this and said that it's not really malicious actors that are the problem, it's passive consumers. And that as teachers, that's really what we're encountering. Right? The students aren't coming to the classroom looking to be a problem. They're just they don't have the skill set.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

And that's so important. One of the one of my favorite uh resources that we have is the sanitizing your news feed resource. And what I think is so cool about it um is it kind of really breaks down like how to interpret the information that you're seeing on social media because social media moves so quickly. And so it's so easy to see something and then like retweet it. The retweet button is like you just push it and then you're done with it. Um so it just forces people, or it urges people rather to take a pause before you do that. And so when we think about all of these different things, like how teachers can teach students to think, not what to think, but just how to think about some of the things that they're seeing and experiencing on online, when we think about that, it seems like there's probably this really long, complicated process, like get to the truth. But what we find most often is it's really simple. And all of the strategies that we teach in the news literacy strategies are so simple. So before you click that retweet button, before you um repost something on Instagram, uh, to just kind of go through a process in your mind about just pausing and not letting yourself be fueled by emotions. Um, we know that we are in an incredibly emotionally charged moment. And that also causes for people to just share information accidentally online, to believe things that we see that are actually satirical or actually like jokes, but it's easy to believe because there's just so many things that support it. And so we try to make sure that the skills that we're teaching and the resources that we're sharing allow for teachers to teach students just how to go through the critical thinking process that allows for them to be smart, conscious, and critical thinkers when it comes to the information that they're seeing every day.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah, I've had that experience of sharing like a like an onion article and having someone react in a way that clearly they they're not understanding the the purpose. So actually, let's let's we'll kind of go big picture here and talk about the news literacy project. You've alluded to a lot of the work that you're doing. Last year, the uh news outlet Fast Company wrote that the news literacy project has emerged as one of the most important educational tools for our time. How did the project start? Uh, what's the mission and vision of the organization? What's what are we kind of talking about when we talk about the news literacy project?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

So, the News Literacy Project is a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, and we provide programs and resources for educators to teach the public to learn and share skills that they need to be smart and active consumers of news and information, and equal and engaged participants in a democracy. And we've been in this fight against misinformation since 2008. Um, and we believe we've created some of the most innovative tools and programs to prevent students and the public from being fooled by false content. And NLP was founded by Alan Miller, who is a Pulzer Prize award-winning journalist in 2008. And we recognize the need to kind of scale our resources up. And so in 2016, we created uh Checology, which is our flagship program. It's a virtual classroom, um, an e-learning platform that empowers educators to teach news literacy to middle and high school students. And we recently released some upper elementary resources just this year, so it's very new. Um, and techology really teaches uh people how to identify credible information, seek out reliable resources, and discern misinformation, which is really at the heart of what we do. And our vision ultimately is that news literacy is embedded in the American education experience. Because as you alluded to, there's since been like a history of news literacy kind of sometimes not being doted as important as it is, but we know um just how important it is. We understand that this proof of concept as it relates to news literacy education has been proven. Uh, we we understand that we've gotten to this moment right now that we're at in history. And one of the solutions to the infodemic, as you alluded to earlier, is news literacy education. So our resources, um, Czechology is in all 50 states, including the District of Columbia. And we're really excited to continue to empower teachers because we believe and know that teachers are the front lines in the fight against misinformation. So we want to just equip them with what they need to really combat this problem.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yeah, and uh huge plug for Czechology. I really um can't um recommend this resource enough. I it it covers so many relevant um topics. I I love that uh algorithms is part of it as well. That's one of those things that you know we just don't think about. We don't understand how how social media and companies really are in a lot of ways using what they know about us. And and the other thing about psychology is you've crafted it in a way that is really engaging for students. I see this on a regular basis. It moves quickly, but not too quick. And it's an interesting mix of videos from experts and practice of the skill. You might talk about how technology was kind of put together because it's, I think, a really important tool that educators should know about.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, um, and there's a reason why it's our flagship resource. Um, and I think you said something really important, which is that we work with experts. We work with journalists, we work with scientists, we work with people who do this work, people who um go beyond education to help us understand some of these really big uh news literacy concepts that technology seeks to kind of help teach students. Um, one of the really cool things about techology is there is you can use it in a hybrid classroom model, you can use it in a completely uh virtual model, or you can use it in person. And it was designed so that no matter kind of how you're teaching, no matter your teaching setting, or no matter the students that you're teaching, whatever your context is, and no matter what discipline you're teaching. So it's not just for social studies teachers. And I think we think that a lot when we talk about uh news literacy, we're thinking social studies, we're thinking maybe civics, but we're not just talking about those disciplines. Csekology was created so that no matter what you teach, you can make a connection. You can make a connection between the concept that checkology is working through. So in this example, we'll say algorithms. So you can make a connection from algorithms to like ELA standards, for example. So in the heart of Czechology is making sure that students can walk through these concepts and understand how they connect to their daily lives, and then educators can see that the outcomes from these um lessons in CECology really equate to their learning standards. And so our hope is that the more teachers use CECology and the more students walk through the technology experience, that they'll have a keen awareness of not just like news literacy education, but they'll understand how it connects to the things they do, how it connects to their timelines, their social media, their family dinner tables, and they'll be able to just think critically about all of the news and other information that they're um receiving. And so Czechology was really built to make sure that students understand news literacy, that students understand reliable sources and know how to find reliable sources, and that students can check the things that they're seeing. They know how to hold um the resources accountable when they're when they're seeing them. And so we're excited about everything that Czechology has done so far and built so far, and for where it's going in the future.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

And you have a really strong partnership with journalists, as you mentioned, all over the country. And I really appreciate the emphasis in some of your resources on journalistic standards, uh, helping students understand that when we talk about the news, these aren't just people who just one day decided to write something about a story they observed. They they have gone through a rigorous education. And so I wonder, could you talk a bit about that? Why um that's important in a lot of the resource resources you provide?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Alan Miller, who founded the News Literacy Project, um, is a journalist, was a journalist for his career. And so this work was really birthed out of this understanding to also understand the basic standards of journalism. So we focus a lot at the news literacy project on news. And a lot of people bundle media together as like one big thing, but that news has standards and news, you're supposed to be able to hold news accountable. And there is a set of rules and ethics and integrity and characteristics of news media and separate from other media. And I think it's easy in our society to bunch all of these things together. And so what happens is then the word news can become watered down. But we um believe in local press, we think that we believe in the First Amendment, we um believe in partnering with journalists so that students understand what news is, um, so that students understand the standards of quality journalism. We hone in on that uh on technology. Also on our website, we have a um document that talks about the standards of quality journalism, which we think is important for students to know because when you know that, then you can hold uh journalists accountable according to those standards, and it can help you draw a distinction between this is a piece of news because I and I can identify it in these ways. And this other thing that I may be looking at is either someone's opinion or is something else, maybe entertainment, something other than news. So we have um this really great lesson on techology that goes into some of the different types of media. And our goal there is that students understand um and we work with uh the amazing Tracy Potts on that, who's just a journalist that I love at the News Literacy Project. Um, and we partner with journalists because we want to make sure that students have an understanding of what journalism is, and that way they can check their resources, they can make sure that they're looking at credible, credible sources, and it really starts with knowing what those standards of quality, quality journalism are, and then you can from there check your resources against those, against those standards. And it just makes for a more like rich understanding of what the news actually is as a discipline, what journalism is as a discipline versus uh what other forms of media and other content are.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Yeah, when we were growing up, it was so much more clear-cut. I mean, it was there was a newspaper, there's a local newspaper, there's television, a few stations. I and students today, the challenge of discerning and what is what is it has to be and it has to be taught.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Um, it's not you know intuitive because they have they didn't build this system, but now that they're in it, um it's important that they know how to navigate it. Um, and I think sometimes we think students aren't aware um of all of the things that are going on that aren't aware of how um different people are looking at the same issue or different sides of an issue. And they are though, they're very tuned into that. And we want to make sure that we're teaching them how to think critically about all of these different things because to your point, they have endless opportunities to, you know, your Facebook feed has a million articles on it every day. And so we want to help them be able to just again like navigate these spaces because it's not, it's not easy. It's not like three news channels and a paper and then, you know, the encyclopedia, and and you got it. Um, which is another reason why, just a special plug for librarians and media specialists. They're the biggest advocates for our work. And for all of the reasons that we're talking about, they are so, so, so central to students being able to like understand and unpack all of these things that we're that we're talking about today, news literacy concepts and know how to navigate these spaces. Um, because it's just it's changed so much, and media specialists are really the ones who are fighting the good fight, man.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

I I a teacher I know uh in uh Washington said once that uh news and media literacy is teaching a fish to see water. They've they've just they've grown up in this to your point. And how do you pull apart the pieces and help them see that it's much more complicated than just what they're living in, this, this, this environment they're living in? Um good.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

I've never heard that before.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, I've held on to that one.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Um how about uh Newslet Camp and some of your other programs? You've got a lot more going on for educators.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah, we we do. Um we have a ton of things, particularly right now, happening for educators. Um, Newslet Camps is one of our um like highlighted resources um and PD learning opportunities for educators. So a Newslet Camp it before the pandemic, uh, they were in person um whole day events, and we we always partner with a um a newspaper or some form of um some journalism organization. That we work with to create a newslet camp. And we take teachers through a full-day experience where they learn about misinformation, where we go through misinformation topics. We talk about real world events in real time with the journalists who are reporting on the news. And this is such a unique experience because it's very rare that educators will have the opportunity to sit in a room or hear on their computers from journalists who are directly talking to them, directly answering their questions about how to navigate this polarizing time that we're living in. They're getting, you know, questions from their students and they want to be able to talk about these things, understanding again the standards of quality journalism, and they want to talk about them with the people who are reporting on them in real time. And some of our other professional learning opportunities, we have an entire like sect of our work that's specifically dedicated to professional learning, to making sure that educators themselves understand these topics that we talk about when we're talking about misinformation, conspiratorial thinking, and how to again navigate teaching in polarizing times, algorithms. How you can discern intent, which is like nearly impossible, deep fakes. Like we just talk about all of these things that we know that students are experiencing, but also educators are people too who are living in the world that we're living in, and they're also trying to navigate how to discern these things. And we want to be able to empower them and put them in a position where they can confidently teach young people how to do it. So we do that through Newslet camps. We have a bunch of other professional learning resources on our website at newslet.org. Something that we just launched last year, excuse me, this year. This has been like the longest year already, but uh we launched Newslet Nation, which is our news literacy educator network. It's our community of practice, and it brings together our educators from across the spectrum and from across the country to come together to engage with us, to engage with one another, um, in a setting where they can ask their questions in a virtual community online, but also turn everything that they're learning online into in-person action and engagement on the ground. And we want to support them in doing that. And so if you go to newslet.org and you click on for educators, you'll find Newslet Nation. You register for a free account. Everything that we do is free. So technology is free. We have no financial incentive in this at all. Our professional learning opportunities, our newslet camps are free. Becoming a member of Newslet Nation is free. And we encourage you to do that because once you join Newslet Nation, you have access to our entire suite of resources. You have access to register for Newslet Camps. You can go to checkology.org and create an account, everything directly from this platform.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

So many great resources. I will be linking all of these in the show notes, and they're all free, as you say. I love the point about you know, teachers aren't immune to this, right? Teachers can share misinformation, right? We get caught up in that. And I know from my own experience using Czechology. Before I used it with my students, I did it myself and found myself learning a lot. You know, it was a great resource. And it's very timely. It doesn't shy away from recent events and issues and controversies. It's not some sanitized theoretical, it is taking place in the issues we're talking about right now. Um you mentioned um deepfakes as you know, and that technology is constantly evolving, right? And this is in one of your resources you quote the Stanford Historical Education Groups saying that education moves slowly, but technology doesn't. So and deep fakes is a good example of that. When you and your team sit down for your meetings and you're talking about what's next for the project, what what's what's on the front burner these days? What do you what have you been talking about most recently?

SPEAKER_01 25:57

My team has been talking a lot about civics education. Um and news literacy is just a foundational competency of civics education. And we've been talking about how central that is and how critical that is. And when the public has a better understanding of how to discern credible information, as well as the role of a free press in a democracy, it cannot be easily misled or incited or prone to feelings of powerlessness when confronted with torrent misinformation, disinformation, um, and politically motivated rumors. Um, and so our work and how we're thinking about like the next phase of our work is really in news literary, excuse me, is really in civics education and making sure that news literacy is a cornerstone of civics education. That for my team and for me, that's an S Frontier. That's a thing that you know literally keeps me up at night, that I'm looking at standards in states and seeing how civics education is addressing news literacy specifically and seeing how we can position ourselves to be a resource, to be helpful. Um, there are a lot of organizations who work in this space. Um we uh do it really well. Um, and we are the largest. And I think that our moment right now is in civics education. That is for at least for my work and my team, that is not just like our next frontier, that is now. That is what we feel like we've been building up toward. Now that we have our resources in all 50 states, now that we um understand and have proof of concept that news literacy education works and we know what's at stake when we aren't doing it, how dangerous that is. Now that we understand that, um, as a society, civics education is the path forward.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Yeah, I really appreciate that connection. Um in fact, there's a, and I've I thought I had a copy around here. I uh the name of the creators escape me now, but there's a new set of history and civic standards, um educating for American Democracy that came out recently, and really happy to see that media and news literacy is part of that. That's something we haven't seen before anywhere in standards, and it's good to see that those are finally starting to be integrated.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Yeah, yeah. We're seeing that a little bit. You know, um, Illinois just a couple weeks ago um incorporated, like created a new bill that passed as it relates to media literacy standards. And uh we're really excited to see states take up this issue and um understand the importance of it and then mandate it. So what we're working toward is like a mandate because we don't want news literacy to just be something that's like nice to have. Like it would be great if you have time, if there's like, you know, room in your curricula. Um and we know teachers are busy. We know that there's literally not enough time in the school year to teach all of the things that you're mandated to teach. Uh we we know that. And so what we want to see happen is that news literacy is just a part of like a mandate for high school graduation requirements. And so if that's in ELA standards, great. If that's in social studies, great. Civics, awesome. Um, we just want to see that there has to be an app, like news literacy has to be in there as it relates to uh graduation requirements in states. And so we're happy when uh states understand that and take that up as a policy issue and then mandate it by law. Um, but we want to see more of that happening. Um, and we want to again be able to help make connections between some of the things that teachers are already teaching and make the connection to news literacy for them in those instances.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Yeah, my in my observations, the media literacy in social studies or in ELA usually refers to the traditional sources we've been looking at. What is how can we judge the credibility of a historical research resource or what's the author's intent? And if there's time, maybe we can get to some more uh news literacy. I think now as you point out, it's starting to flip a little bit, and we're starting to make create more space and time for uh this pressing need.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Um I I want to mention, because I think this is really important. So we also in 2020, we launched what's called the News Literacy Ambassador Program. And I think this is key to the point that we're talking about because news literacy ambassadors are champions in their community. Uh, we have 13 ambassadors currently in 10 cities, and where we just we have an application out for more ambassadors for this next cohort. But I'm mentioning this because ambassadors out are grassroots organizers in the fight against misinformation on the ground. And we've been training them and working with them in their community context. Uh, they're all educators, and we've been working alongside them to again, not just provide them with training, but also to hear from them as it relates to the unique challenges that they're experiencing in their context. Some of them teach in rural communities, some of them teach in urban communities, they some of them work at the district level, but we've really been wanting to hear from them to understand some of their unique challenges that they're experiencing as it relates to teaching news literacy education and what those barriers are, and how we can be a resource to those barriers so that we are actually addressing the need where it is. And so that we're creating resources and programs that um meet the need of the educators in their work. Um, and so what's been such a fruitful aspect of this is they've been able to kind of, we've been kind of a train the trainer model. So they've been able to um host events, they've been able to do webinars where they talk to specifically educators in their regions. And we really think that as we're doing this work to get news literacy mandated, like that's what we hope to see. We're happy that there are champions on the ground and that people don't have to feel like they're doing this work in silo. We've learned is that educators feel like they're alone. Um, you may be the only person in your school, you may be the only librarian. Oftentimes there's one librarian in an entire school, sometimes in an entire district. And so it's the one person who kind of thinks this is really important and they don't have support. So our ambassador program is a reaction to that. Like we want you to know that you have support on the ground, maybe not in your city, but in your area that you can connect with. Um and then we created the network so that you know that you have support in one another, you have support in us, and there's a suite of resources that are created just to kind of push this work forward so you don't have to do it by yourself. Um, so that there's like an army of champions being raised up who are saying, like, this is really important. And we don't want to just continue like teaching as usual, but we want to empower students to be, you know, the next leaders, to be the next um politicians, the next business people to make sure that they understand and can and can preserve our democracy as we as we know it. And we and make sure that that's equitable and make sure that that makes sense for the world that we live in now. And we are so excited to have a program like the ambassador program that's built out our local footprint in the ground on the ground, um, because that's been really central in like seeing these things realized. And so we've been really excited about that and are looking forward to seeing kind of how those types of programs um progress in the future.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

You mentioned teachers feeling isolated, like maybe they're the only one that wants to do it in their building. So if a teacher is listening to this and really wants to get involved and is very interested in in your project, what's step one? Where should a teacher go first to start their journey with media literacy?

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Step one, visit the website. Um, and on the website, you will see a suite of resources, everything that uh we've talked about today, and even some things that I may not have mentioned, but you'll see an entire suite of resources online. And I cannot stress them enough, this enough, everything is free. Um, so feel free to share those resources, to sign up for events, to use those resources, and just know that the only goal is to empower you to empower the next generation. And so um go to newslet.org. And then I would say step two will be to click on the for educators tab, which is right there on the homepage at the top. If you're an educator, click on for educators and that will open up to Newslet Nation. Sign up for a free account, register there, and let your journey begin. If you have questions about news literacy education, how you can teach it in your context, or if you're using Czechology and you get stuck and you want to talk about something, there's a forum there that my team monitors and you can engage with other educators. You can share documents. I've seen teachers share lesson plans because there are some educators who are like, I really want to teach this, but I don't really know how to incorporate it in my lesson plan. There's an educator in Georgia who's like, I got you, and who would share it with you online. So we wanted to create a community so that you will know that wherever you are, you're not doing this work by yourself, that we're here to support you, but that there are also other educators who are here to support you because it's lonely on the front lines in the fighting against misinformation. And we want students to be civically engaged. We want to um really protect um our democracy. And because we believe that news literacy is just a solution to that, we want you to know that there's a community of champions who are rallying around you to help you do that the best way possible. And the news literacy project is really helping to facilitate that conversation, both online but also in person. So go to newslet.org and then click on the for educators tab and flourish.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Um thanks for bringing up that uh the connection to preserving and promoting and strengthening our democracy throughout this conversation. I think that's such an important part of this. Ebony, I want to thank you for joining me. I really want to thank the News Literacy Project for all the resources and for being free. You know, I think we've seen in the past year or two the um educational industrial complex looking to profit off the challenges we're facing. And organizations like yours who are making all these wonderful resources free to educators are really important right now.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Yeah, I have to say that, you know, at the onset of the pandemic, we um got rid of the paywall barrier. Um, and and we're gonna continue to do that. That's not like a pandemic thing. Um, we have completely gotten rid of the paywall for the foreseeable future as it relates to technology and other resources. And we also created a line of work that's just for the general public. And so if you also go to our website and you click on the for everyone tab, you'll see resources for the general public. And um, I know we're talking to educators here, but you have family members, you have others that you may want to share it with. I regularly engage with our resources as well just to, you know, kind of stay on top of the issues myself. And so um, I'm so grateful to be able to do this work. I feel very blessed to do that. I'm thankful that we have so many great partners and funders who understand the urgency of the moment and who understand that there are communities and their lives that are at stake. Um, you know, we've, again, I can't stress this enough, have seen in the pandemic what happens when people don't have the information needed, like that literally lives are at stake. We know that there are entire communities that are threatened right now because people aren't armed with the ability to discern the information that they're seeing from trusted and reliable resources. And so this isn't like just something that we're hoping uh teachers can can take and to and to teach students, but we're what we're saying is this is you know, life and death matter. And we are addressing that as such. We are responding to the urgency of the moment and in fact hoping to take a proactive role in making sure that everything that we're working to preserve and protect is mandated so that we can like guidelines for a future founded on facts. But we really, we really believe that. And personally, I grew up in the Los Angeles Unified School District system. I had a wonderful education there, but I understand the complexities of teachers who I had, uh my counselor had like 600 students, um, a high school counselor. And so it's just like you're strapped. We had one librarian who was supposed to help us go like understand all the sort resources and sources who is supposed to, this one person was supposed to help every student really navigate this space. And it was just an impossible task for them. But I'm grateful that there were uh people who intervened. Um, I am also into journalism school. There were like folks who like sparked my interest in journalism and in reading and in understanding these very complicated topics because when you do that, you'll see how everything connects together. And I just think that's so important. So this work isn't just for, you know, isn't just for people who can have access to this information. We want this work to be for everyone, to be for communities where there's maybe one librarian in the entire community. We want to say, like, we see you and we want to support you and want to give you everything that you need to make sure that the people in that community are equipped with the facts and know how to discern what's true and what's not true in the news and other forms of content that they're that they're seeing online and offline. And so we want to make sure that every community, every town, every context has access to those resources. And I'm just so thankful that the News Literacy Project gets to be at the forefront of that work and that I get to be a part of this like larger movement that's happening in news literacy education. And I think we're leading that movement well. And my hope is that um as we pursue a future founded on facts that will really empower people to take a stand against misinformation and work toward toward seeing this future realized for our young people because we can see negative at stake when we don't do that together.

unknown 40:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

A future founded on facts. I love that. I think I'm gonna get that up on my wall here somehow.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

I'll send you a sticker.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

All right. Ebony Rice, you are the senior vice president of Educator Network at the News Literacy Project. I really want to thank you for taking the time uh joining me today and sharing all the important work you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

My pleasure. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

A huge thanks to Ebony Rice for joining me on the show, and a huge thanks to the News Literacy Project for all the work they're doing and the resources they're providing. As I said at the top and throughout the interview, depending on how deep you want to get into media and news literacy, uh, NewsLit Pro has got something for you. Uh head on over, check out the links in the show notes and get started. Personally, technology for me is where it's at as they've got so many uh engaging lessons for students ready to go, all built into a platform that students really enjoy. Thanks for checking out what's the big idea. Be sure to check us out next time. Uh, I'm gonna be talking about the power of unstructured play and imagination in a world of uh over-scheduled and hyper-digitized students. And as always, I'm on Twitter at Big Idea Ed. Comments, questions, reactions. Take care, everyone.