Google's new media literacy program teaches kids how to spot disinformation and fake news

Google announced this morning it's expanding its two-year-old digital safety and citizenship curriculum for children, "Be Internet Awesome," to now include media literacy -- specifically, the ability to identify so-called "fake news" and other false content. The company is launching six new media literacy activities for the curriculum that will help teach kids things like how to avoid a phishing attack, what bots are, how to verify that information is credible, how to evaluate sources, how to identify disinformation online, spot fake URLs, and more. The new media literacy classes -- which frankly, some adults should read through as well -- were developed in collaboration with Anne Collier, executive director of The Net Safety Collaborative, and Faith Rogow, Ph.D., co-author of The Teacher’s Guide to Media Literacy and a co-founder of the National Association for Media Literacy Education.