Rush, who works at Boise High School in Idaho, was not the only one worried by this trend. Between 2020 and 2023, 15 states passed laws to promote or require K-12 media literacy lessons, which teach students to think critically about what they see and read online, according to a report from Media Literacy Now.
The nonprofit describes media literacy as an umbrella term that includes cross-checking information, using screens mindfully, avoiding exploitation, understanding algorithms and reflecting on financial motives for content.
Rush said a big piece of media literacy, especially for older students, is learning how to spot and fact-check potential misinformation online. To teach her students this skill, she uses a set of online databases that contain vetted information on topics that range from U.S. and world history to science and global issues.
Called Gale In Context, the databases are like online encyclopedias, Rush said, but with regular updates, and a slew of additional content from sources such as newspapers and peer-reviewed journals.
The databases were launched in 2009 to provide schools with online research and teaching material and have long been available in the Boise School District, Rush said. But use of them to teach students how to fact-check social media and other online sources has only ramped up since the pandemic, she said, as the need for media literacy became clear.
“You started seeing the huge push of social media. You started seeing more kids on their phones, more kids scrolling,” she said. “They’re getting so much of their information from social media, and they just believe everything that they see, and they really shouldn’t.”
A FACT-CHECKING PLATFORM
Rush said one of her favorite ways to teach media literacy is to scroll TikTok for suspicious posts, then share her screen with students as she fact-checks them against verified information in the databases. She said she takes such media literacy lessons into each English teacher’s classroom, and that students follow along with Gale In Context open on their laptops.
“I tell them, ‘I just want you to be responsible consumers of information. When you see something, and you think it seems weird, check. Go find out. Because it probably is weird, and there probably is something wrong with it,’” Rush said. “And unfortunately, this generation is just hammered with it.”
In addition to providing a platform for students to practice fact-checking, Gale In Context also helps them grasp what credible information looks like, according to Lemma Shomali, vice president of product management for Gale parent company Cengage.
Shomali said students will see in the databases that news articles have dates and bylines, peer-reviewed studies have citations, and that there are links to studies for evidence when a claim has been made. She added that, with media literacy education, students are then trained to look for such features outside the database environment.
“So when they come across a TikTok or an Instagram post or what have you, they may now be looking at it and saying, ‘Huh, this doesn’t have any of those things in there,’” Shomali said. “And it equips them to say, ‘What are your sources? Where did this data come from? Is this validated?’”
