Digital Literacy
Free, Online Tool Helps Students Find Credible News
A recent study found that digital natives have difficulty judging the credibility of online news. A startup software and solutions company based in Austin, TX has released a new tool to help K–12 students improve news literacy and better judge the credibility of online news.
Prolific Labs created QuoteItWith.Me (QIWM) to help young writers learn how to spot fake news and master source material. Developed by former writing teachers, the online tool asks users to input a quote and “then walks them through the steps necessary to frame the quote while coaching them on the finer points of evaluating sources,” according to the company’s website. In other words, students are asked to consider who said the quote, why, when and other important questions that will help determine its credibility and how to incorporate it into writing.
Moreover, the tool providers feedback on sources, letting users know when they quote a source whose audience, according to a Pew Research Center study, is more liberal or conservative.
“QuoteItWith.me’s goal is to coach students through the steps that more accomplished writers take for granted,” said Robert McCarthy, co-founder of Prolific Labs, in a prepared statement. “With research and writing now fully online, plagiarism and poor source choices happen at the speed of a copy-and-paste. We created QuoteItWith.Me as a way to apply the brakes.”
To use the free tool, visit the Prolific Labs site here.
About the Author
Sri Ravipati is Web producer for THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at [email protected].