Education startup Newsela was established in 2013 to help children improve on their literacy skills. The company recently heightened its focus on teaching children how to spot fake news on the internet, as well as help them become responsible users of digital media.
After the U.S. presidential elections, fake news on the internet was a hot topic of discussion. Newsela recognized that this also impacted the way children consume and digest online information.
"Their lives are one-hundred percent digital," Newsela's editor-in-chief Jennifer Coogan said via Business Insider. She also noted that fabricated news is "a lot easier [to create] in the digital world" hence the need to help children teach them to be more discerning of what they read on the internet.
Newsela has an established partnership with different media organizations like The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Associated Press, The Guardian and the Scientific American when it started. But in pushing for their advocacy against fake news, the startup is also working with the American Press Institute in preparing their Media Literacy Toolkit.
Teachers and students may use the contents from this kit in classroom discussions and analysis about digital media. There are also quizzes and exercises for children, such as learning to write stories so that they will be able to differentiate between factual reporting and opinion writing.
"Once students are better able to evaluate media based on reliability and accuracy, they'll be able to apply these skills beyond the classroom for years to come," Coogan wrote in the Newsela blog. The resource site offers both free and paid subscription services for educators and even parents.
Former teachers and education specialists work behind the scenes at Newsela, according to Quartz. So far, the startup has about 11 million users as of October 2016. Learn more about how the resource site helps children in recognizing fake news in the video below.
