Open Society

Free lessons and assessments that help you teach students to evaluate online information that affects them, their communities, and the world.

The Internet has democratized access to information but in so doing has opened the floodgates to misinformation, fake news, and rank propaganda masquerading as

This is even trickier now that the language of critical thinking has been appropriated by the alt-right.

Look to your left. Look to your right. Look at this video. Today, John Green is going to teach you how to read laterally, using multiple tabs in your browser to look stuff up and fact check as you read. Real-time fact-checking an help you figure out what's real and what's not on the internet. Special thanks to our partners from MediaWise who helped create this series: The Poynter Institute The Stanford History Education Group (sheg.stanford.edu) Follow MediaWise and their fact-checking work across social: https://www.instagram.com/mediawise/ https://www.youtube.com/mediawise https://twitter.com/mediawise https://www.facebook.com/MediaWise/ MediaWise is supported by Google. Crash Course is on Patreon! You can support us directly by signing up at http://www.patreon.com/crashcourse Thanks to the following Patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever: Eric Prestemon, Sam Buck, Mark Brouwer, Naman Goel, Patrick Wiener II, Nathan Catchings, Efrain R. Pedroza, Brandon Westmoreland, dorsey, Indika Siriwardena, James Hughes, Kenneth F Penttinen, Trevin Beattie, Satya Ridhima Parvathaneni, Erika & Alexa Saur, Glenn Elliott, Justin Zingsheim, Jessica Wode, Kathrin Benoit, Tom Trval, Jason Saslow, Nathan Taylor, Brian Thomas Gossett, Khaled El Shalakany, SR Foxley, Yasenia Cruz, Eric Koslow, Caleb Weeks, Tim Curwick, D.A. Noe, Shawn Arnold, Malcolm Callis, Advait Shinde, William McGraw, Andrei Krishkevich, Rachel Bright, Jirat, Ian Dundore -- Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/YouTubeCrashCourse Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/TheCrashCourse Tumblr - http://thecrashcourse.tumblr.com Support Crash Course on Patreon: http://patreon.com/crashcourse CC Kids: http://www.youtube.com/crashcoursekids

Evaluating where information comes from is a crucial part of deciding whether it is trustworthy. By observing fact checkers, we found that the best way to learn about a website is lateral reading—leaving a site to see what other digital sources say about it. In this sequence of lessons, teachers model lateral reading and guide students through a series of structured activities to develop and improve their lateral reading skills. Students contrast lateral reading with vertical reading (staying on a single webpage), and learn how checking what other websites say about a source is a better evaluation strategy than trusting what the source says about itself. These lessons also introduce students to resources they can use when laterally reading: Wikipedia, news stories, and fact-checking organizations’ websites.

I saw the news today that HuffPo is shutting down their “contributor network.” we are ending the HuffPost contributor platform. The platform, which launched in May 2005, was a revolutionary idea at the time: give a megaphone to lots of people ― some famous, some completely unknown ― to tell their stories. At that time, social networks […]

The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and…

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

“#MedTwitter is shocked that disabled & chronically ill folks identify as their conditions because they've never actually been exposed to us except in medical textbooks & clinics. They don't take #DisabilityStudies classes. They don't socialize with us. They don't listen to us.”

How communities are decentralizing social networking, no billionaires required. With the mass exodus of Twitter users following Elon Musk’s takeover, alternative platforms are gaining popularity among these ‘digital refugees’. The leading choice for many is Mastodon, free and open-source self-hosted social networking. Why is it growing so fast, and

“The five neurodivergent love languages: infodumping, parallel play, support swapping, Please Crush My Soul Back Into My Body, and "I found this cool rock/button/leaf/etc and thought you would like it"”

“Things that a lot of autistic people are tired of hearing. - a thread.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pursued white supremacist policies with deep roots in the Jim Crow era.

There are tough sells, and there are tough sells. Selling shares of Twitter at $54.20 today could be grist for a sequel to *Glengarry Glen Ross*.

The study which measured brain age after about 10 months of lockdown showed that teen brains had aged at least three years in that time.

Looks at the varying ways educators characterize progressive education, why progressive education makes sense, and why it might be the exception rather than the rule in educational philosophies.

When we don’t use the word “progressive” to describe a school’s philosophy or program–slowly and incrementally over time–the teachers, administrators, families, and the students become detached from the strong foundation that the progressive education tradition can provide. Published by Human Restoration Project, a 501(c)3 organization restoring humanity to education.

Two Black academics discuss the rationale behind leaving Twitter or going down with the ship.

I was in college and found myself organizing a gay rights protest before I fully understood what gay rights meant.

Owning Twitter means owning a host of impossible political problems. Is Elon ready?

Matt Mullenweg explains the myriad challenges now being faced by Elon Musk.

“The conflation between scientific and dehumanizing is once again, doing a lot of leg work here. Whenever autistic people are like "please don't dehumaize, objectify, or stigmatize me or us" there will always be a researcher ready to claim "but it's science".”

People who on the autism spectrum are frequently thought of as lacking the ability to accurately recognize the emotions of others, but is that true? A study published in Autism Research suggests that when certain differences are accounted for, individuals with autism can actually outperform neurotypicals. ...

Many school policies increase disadvantage for economically marginalized students. School leaders must recognize and change that pattern.