Website Evaluation Skype Game

Another media specialist in my district recently discovered the Fake News Skype Challenge lesson on the Microsoft Educator Community and suggested playing with our fifth graders. We met a few days before the lessons were scheduled to plan and decided to adapt the lesson to better meet our students' needs.

Before the lesson, I created two graphics and we asked our fifth grade teachers to upload them to Canvas, our district's learning management system. When students arrived in the media center, they quickly logged into Canvas on our laptops to access the graphics.

We started by introducing ourselves and our students. Some of our students already knew each other from sports and were excited to connect. Then we explained that we were going to play a game called "Two Truths and a Lie." Most of our students expressed that they had played this game before. We told them that unlike in the traditional game, students would be allowed to use technology to help determine which statement was the lie.

Then we discussed how difficult it is sometimes to decide if a website contains reliable information. Several students shared examples of sites they had visited previously that looked like authentic websites but turned out to have inaccurate information. We directed students to open the graphic called "Seven Tests of Reliability." We read each of the seven tests and discussed how they can be used to determine whether a website contains reliable information. We also told students that we expected them to use these seven tests during the game to determine which statement was the lie.

Then we directed students to open the other graphic. This file contained the three statements for students to evaluate. After we read through all of the statements, we asked students to vote on which one they thought was the lie by standing up after we read it again. 

Then it was research time! We directed students to www.bing.com. They used Bing to locate websites about teach topic. Students were reminded to use the Seven Tests of Reliability for each website they visited to decide whether the information was likely to be accurate or not.

After students had adequate time to research (about fifteen minutes), we asked them to vote again. We read each statement and asked students to stand when we read the statement they believed to be a lie.  

Then we revealed the lie. I thought before we played the game that the lie would be obvious to students, especially after having time to research. However, this was not true! So we spent some time at the end of each lesson discussing which websites students used to gather information and why they were or were not reliable. During this part of the lesson, students who wanted to share spoke directly to the camera so that students in the other school could hear their comments.  

We will definitely plan this lesson again next year. Our students were fully engaged in the game and loved interacting with students from another school!