I can’t say enough about the PBS teachers site (www.pbs.org/teachers).  “Discover the power of social media while promoting your students’ civic engagement” through  Access, Analyze, Act: A Blueprint for 21st Century Civic Engagement.

The site contains curriculum guides and lesson plans designed for k-12 (the higher level lessons can easily be tweaked for college freshmen). I’m especially interested in the following lesson plans, all of which could be adapted for use in Critical Thinking or Advanced Research courses:

Access, Analyze, Act: Changing Media, Changing Campaigns

Explore how media technologies have played a role in presidential campaigns throughout history; research how media has been used in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections; identify key events and compile information, photos, and videos illustrating media use during these campaign years; and create timelines using an online timeline tool. (PDF)

Access, Analyze, Act: Connecting Politics to Everyday Life

Compare people’s knowledge of celebrities to their knowledge of politicians, learn about your local, state and national representatives, and recognize important links between political issues and your everyday life. Then gather information about the views of your Congressional representative(s) as they relate to political issues that affect you. (PDF)

Access, Analyze, Act: Create an Advocacy Video

Choose a political issue and design a short persuasive video that demonstrates your knowledge and position regarding the issue and encourages viewers to take action. Then post your video online. (PDF)

Access, Analyze, Act: Debate with the Devil’s Advocate

Use an online devil’s advocate tool to expand your thinking about key issues in the 2008 election. Learn how people interpret issues differently, identify persuasive techniques, and determine what information is missing. (PDF)

Access, Analyze, Act: Express Your Views in a Vlog or Podcast

Choose a campaign issue and develop a persuasive extemporaneous speech that you record as audio or video files and share online. (PDF)

Access, Analyze, Act: Identifying Genres and Persuasion in Political Discourse

Learn about six genres of political discourse in the media and three persuasive appeals based on Aristotle’s classical rhetoric, then find and analyze examples of the genres and persuasive techniques on the Web sites of the 2008 presidential candidates. (PDF)

-LF

I’ve been working on designing the “Dear Someone/Persuasive Letter” assignment to use this fall, and stumbled upon this great site from Annenberg called Fact Checked. There are a ton of great lesson plan ideas that incorporate information literacy skills.

Here’s what the site has to say about itself:

“Our aim is to help students learn to be smart consumers of these messages, not to accept them at face value; to dig for facts using the Internet, not to stop looking once they get to Wikipedia; and to weigh evidence logically, not to draw conclusions based on their own biases. The materials on this site, then, are meant to help students acquire the skills to see through the spin. Under the heading Tools of the Trade we’ve outlined a five-step framework for analyzing information and avoiding deception. That process is the essence of what we do at FactCheck.org, where we have been debunking false and misleading claims in politics since 2003.”

I’m so impressed with this site and can’t wait to incorporate some of the lesson plans into my Lib300 class. The site will be extremely useful in teaching students how to evaluate information found on the Internet:

“The Internet is a fantastic source of facts, but also a source of dubious claims and misinformation. Here we offer our observations on which sites are generally reliable and unbiased, and which are not.” Websites are sorted into 3 different baskets:

• The Official Word – Sites where you can find government statistics and official reports and documents.
• Policy Wonks – Sites of non-governmental organizations that study issues, though not always from a neutral point of view.
• For the Cause – Sites that offer information while also advocating a particular stance on a policy matter.

You will definitely want to check out the videocasts which demonstrate “fact checking” in action. I was thinking what a great assignment it would be to have students mimic this “news reporting” and create videos which discuss the facts and the bias seen in the media. -LF