Joel Breakstone

Justin Reich is joined by Joel Breakstone, director of the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), and co-lead on Beyond the Bubble and Civic Online Reasoning projects. Together they discuss assessing online information, the research of SHEG, and the methods used by fact checkers to determine the validity of information.

“For one thing, when they did a search, they didn't immediately click on the first search result, which is what many of the Stanford students, and even some of the historians did. Instead, the fact-checkers engaged in what we refer to as click restraint. They paused, and they looked at the snippets about the search results. And they took a moment to check out the URLs, and then made a decision about where they should begin their search. Because that initial click often greatly influences the kind of search that you end up conducting.”  - Joel Breakstone

 

In this episode we’ll talk about:

The challenges of evaluating online informationThe Stanford History Group researchCognitive Task AnalysisThe fact checker approachLateral Reading, Click Restraint, and Strategic IgnoringNew study published as a follow-upDigital literacy in educationWikipedia

 

Resources and Links

Learn more about Stanford’s Civic Online Reasoning!

Check out their most recent article: Student's Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait

Learn more about Beyond the Bubble!

Check out Justin Reich’s book, Failure To Disrupt!

Join our self-paced online edX course: Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning

Join our self-paced online edX course: Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices

 

Transcript

https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/joel-breakstone/transcript

 

Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley

 

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