Borderline Cases Project:
The purpose of this project was for us to learn about fake news, and to teach people how to detect them. We learned about how fake news work, why they work so well, and how there are different types of fake news. After learning and doing a lot of research on fake news, we were able to write our own fake news. The purpose of writing these articles was to teach people how to detect fake news and what to look out for. We were able to teach the readers how to spot fake news by adding what we call, red flags.
Original Conspiracy Theory Presentation:
Click to set custom HTML
For this assignment, we had to do a presentation on conspiracy theories. I chose to do this presentation on this specific conspiracy theory because all the other options we had, I already knew a lot about them, and since I didn't really know much about chemtrails and how they became a conspiracy theory, I decided that I wanted to learn more about them.
I did this presentation with my parter Sebastian. It was really difficult to make because the both of us didn't really know much about what they were. When we first started working on this presentation, we were really excited to learn more about it. At the end, we realized how absurd the conspiracy theory was, so all the excitement had gone away. This didn't matter much though, we still found it funny and had fun presenting it to the class. The first day that I was doing research on this conspiracy, I thought there would be a chance that it might be true. Now, after learning a lot about fake news, I realize how there is no way this can be true. Dr. P's Hoax WebsiteDr. P gave us a website and our class was supposed to determine wether it was real or not. After reading it, as a class we found out it was fake. We came to this conclusion because it was made from a weebly website, which is what almost every HTHCV teacher and student have. We also determined it was fake because the "author" of the website was Dr. P's friend.
|
|
My Story So Far
We wrote an essay which was about our story regarding the project. We were supposed to talk about if we liked the project, what we thought about it, and if we think it's teaching us anything. Here's mine:
Biggest Threat Facing Journalism
We also wrote another essay, which is still a work in progress. This one was about what we think the biggest threat for journalism is. Here's mine:
Final Fake News Story
I came up with this idea because I was using my phone and I was on Snapchat. I have both plastic surgeons Dr. Miami and Dr. Smiley, both of them post their surgeries on the app. While watching Dr. Smiley's story, I knew I had to do my story related to it. The first day we started writing, I was having the worst writer's block. I had the idea, but I had nothing to follow up to it. I didn't know what the full story would be. After the weekend, I came to class, and finished it in one sit. I was proud of it. My article didn't really change much, only small things like the date, and some made up names. I added three big red flags to my article. The first one was the fake author. The second red flag was the date it was published, almost a year old, so it was most likely irrelevant now. The last red flag was that the website it was "published" on was fake, I made it up.
The next thing we had to do after we had finished our articles was to show them to 8th graders. I didn't really think my article looked professional, so I was a little worried. My worries went away when I sat down with the 8th grader who had my article and she asked me, "What did you think when you read it? I would not trust that surgeon at all." The moment she said this, I knew she had fallen for it. She really thought my article was real!
Here's my article:
The next thing we had to do after we had finished our articles was to show them to 8th graders. I didn't really think my article looked professional, so I was a little worried. My worries went away when I sat down with the 8th grader who had my article and she asked me, "What did you think when you read it? I would not trust that surgeon at all." The moment she said this, I knew she had fallen for it. She really thought my article was real!
Here's my article:
Exhibition Day
If I could describe exhibition in one word it would be: fun. It was fun to teach my mom, who practically knew nothing about fake news. It was fun to talk to my mom about the project, but it was also really challenging. Since she knew nothing about fake news, I had to explain to her everything, from beginning to end. It was even more challenging because I had to explain everything in another language, Spanish.
My job at this exhibition was to welcome people in, and to explain our project. I have to say that I was extremely nervous because it's always been hard for me to talk to strangers. At first I felt like I wasn't doing my job like I was supposed to, but a little after, I got more comfortable and did better.
This exhibition was so much fun, especially helping my mom understand what fake news were. I really do think that this project helped a lot of people because I know it helped me a lot, and it also helped my mom. For example, every now and then, my mom shows me her phone on which she's reading an article and she tells me that she doesn't really know if its reliable or not, so she asks me to help her. I believe that our class was able to get our point across and teach other people.
My job at this exhibition was to welcome people in, and to explain our project. I have to say that I was extremely nervous because it's always been hard for me to talk to strangers. At first I felt like I wasn't doing my job like I was supposed to, but a little after, I got more comfortable and did better.
This exhibition was so much fun, especially helping my mom understand what fake news were. I really do think that this project helped a lot of people because I know it helped me a lot, and it also helped my mom. For example, every now and then, my mom shows me her phone on which she's reading an article and she tells me that she doesn't really know if its reliable or not, so she asks me to help her. I believe that our class was able to get our point across and teach other people.