A FactCheck for the Classroom (fwd)

[theteach <theteach@theteachonline.net>]

I subscribe to FactCheck and received this notice today.

alex

Announcing: A FactCheck for the Classroom

To our subscribers:

This e-mail feels a bit like a birth announcement. Last Thursday night, we 
flipped the switch to start up a brand new website, a sibling to 
FactCheck.org. This one, though, is focused on helping high school 
students learn to think analytically.

The new site, www.FactCheckED.org <http://www.factchecked.org/>, 
recognizes that kids are growing up in a world of ceaseless and 
instantaneous communication. Accurate and unbiased information can be an 
elusive commodity in this constant stream of messages ? many of which are 
attempts to persuade the recipient to do or buy something.

Our aim is to help students learn to be smart consumers of these messages. 
To that end, we provide tools to help them dig for facts, debunk 
deceptions, set aside preconceptions and weigh evidence logically ? and to 
help their teachers guide them toward good strategies for doing that. For 
educators, there is our Lesson Plans 
<http://factchecked.org/LessonPlans.aspx> section. Most of the plans are 
framed around political or consumer advertising and lead students on a 
process of discovery to uncover the facts.

One section of the site, Straight from the 
Source<http://factchecked.org/StraightFromTheSource.aspx>, provides a 
guide to Internet research as well as a list of government, think-tank and 
advocacy group websites with our assessments of their reliability and what 
they offer. Our Dictionary<http://factchecked.org/Dictionary.aspx>is 
designed to help decode the bureaucratese and terms of art that often 
baffle the uninitiated. We invite you to explore.

We also invite your comments. If you have complaints about the site or 
suggestions about ways to do things better, we want to hear from you at 
Editor@FactCheckED.org. If you like the site we want to hear that, too. 
This is a new venture for us, and something of a work in progress. We'll 
be offering more material as time goes on. You can help guide us by 
telling us what you find useful and what you don't.

Thanks, as always, for your support.

Viveca Novak Brooks Jackson