Well, I wasn't expecting a textbook/teacher's guide, but this has some interesting exercises in it. My daughter home schools her children and I 'm going to give it to her, perhaps she can get some use out of it in a few years when they're older. Glad to see subject matter like this being made available for grade school age kids, the sooner they learn to spot fake news the better!

I got this as a free ARC from library thing.com in return for an honest review.

When I requested this I thought it was some sore of critical analysis. When I got it I saw the small banner "Grades 4-6" and thought, great a book for middle schoolers. When I started reading it I realized it was a teacher's guide for teaching critical thinking about news sources for middle schoolers. The text is very advanced (as befitting its audiance, college trained school teachers).

I think the book works on a couple of levels. It helps teachers understand the idea of critical thinking about news. It's a bit on the folksy side in places but that may be an attempt to help the teachers relate the information better to their students. It's primary purpose is to teach kids to understand hiw to get news from the internet, how to evaluate it and more important, how to synthesize it into something they can use.

Each chapter has student exercises designed first to get the students to realize that what the read on the internet isn't necessary true, or even unbiased. A student is quoted as say he got all his news from Facebook. He justified this by saying isn't that why it's called a news feed?

So the students are first showed that information can come from different sources (Wikipedia, Facebook, etc) and how to do Google searches. I've been using Goggle for many years and I actually learned something useful from this section. Then they are showed how to figure out the credibility of different sources and how to avoid getting into an information bubble. Frankly, many adults need to know how to do this.

My only mild critism of the book is I think the author should have emphized skepticism more. I think many of the early activities should show the students the value of skepticism but I wouldn't be too sure that kids this age (8-10 year olds?) would get it without being more explicit about it.

My own kids were middle schoolers in the mid-1990s when the internet was just starting to take off. My youngest remembers being introduced to searching for information on the internet but this was pre-Goggle and there was just not as much stuff as there is today.

One of the concluding exercises was to present three arguments for and against the existance of the yeti. The author chose this particular subject, in part, because there are several products called Yeti (a cooler, some other stuff) meaning the students would have to sift through completely irrelevant stuff.

A book like this risks being obsolete almost as soon as it comes off the presses. Obviously, the reference to Fake News in the title brings to mind current politics. There was virtually nothing about possible election interferenc from fake posts on Facebook and Twitter. A future edition should probably include something about that. ( )

Initially, I disliked this book entirely. The screenshot graphics were too small to read, the sample activities for the students were unfocused or too abstract to be useful, and the layout of the book was a little confusing. However, though I won't use the book as a whole, there are some useful pieces and some useful learning activities that I will use. In understanding a classroom and the curriculum that is required to be taught in a limited amount of time, the lessons here wander too much. With some condensing and refocusing of the sample activities, I can make this work. So while I initially thought I would say to not waste your time with this book, I do feel that I have a slightly shifted perspective in how I will teach the investigation of reliable sources and understanding fake news.

This is an excellent book of ideas of how to teach students to evaluate news and think for themselves. Particularly important in today's yellow journalism climate. ( )

This book is a helpful guide to help people figure out what news is fake. It comes with activities that is quite enjoyable to do and will actually help. This book is very important to read because now, apparently there is tons of fake news and people seems can't tell what is real news and what is fake. ( )