A Quiz to teach kids about Fake News and Critical Thinking
Each time my 8 year old daughter wants the answer to something she doesn’t know, she asks Siri and takes the answer as the absolute truth. She isn’t the only one. Research shows that 1 in 5 kids think everything they read on Google is true. Studies also show that students across all ages struggle to determine fake news from true stories.
As the global attention to fake news and how to deal with it continues, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom. Tools and games to teach kids about fake news have been emerging and many are aimed at secondary or older students. We saw an opportunity to create a really fun learning experience that would pit classmates against each other as they compete to guess whether a sensational news headline is true or false.
We intentionally designed the Kahoot quiz to make it almost impossible to tell between true and false headlines. We mixed up real fake news stories like the dolphins returning to Venice during Coronavirus, with unbelievable true stories like bomb detecting bees, and finally we invited kids to invent their own ‘false but true sounding’ headlines.
In the visual world children are growing up in, we are firm believes in the power of images to not only capture attention but also deepen learning. We visualised the headlines with eye-catching graphics that we also made into IG filters, physical stickers and Gif stickers.
The competitive nature of the quiz makes children pause to consider after reading the headline. This is a simple habit we hope children can build on as they navigate the complex media environment they are growing up in.
A few weeks after she completed the quiz, I asked my daughter what she remembered about it. She fondly recalled the art gallery for pet lizards, and stated ‘even if something sounds true it might not be, I can’t believe everything I read.’
Tackling systemic issues like fake news requires collaboration from all parts of the ecosystem, in education and beyond. Our fake news project which includes the quiz, a facilitator toolkit with discussion points and learnings post quiz, and a series of PSA animations is free and accessible to all thanks to a collaboration between design-led social enterprise EYEYAH!, quiz platform Kahoot, Nickelodeon and The Media Literacy Council of Singapore.
It is collaborations of this nature that enable high quality design-led edutainment materials to enter the system. What remains is for parents, teachers and carers to embrace the importance of media literacy and critical thinking development from a young age.
