In this free, hands-on course you will
- Evaluate online sources like a professional fact checker
- Practice lateral reading and other fact-checking methods centered on a topic relevant to you and your curriculum or content area
- Gain confidence and resources to recognize both reliable and unreliable sources whether researching online or scrolling social media
- Prepare students to find reliable sources, whether human or AI-generated, by creating a lesson plan on any aspect of online source evaluation in a way that aligns with your curriculum goals
Who Should Take This Course
K-12 educators in all subject areas who want to develop skills and confidence with media making and media literacy.
Course Features
Learn online at your own pace with step-by-step videos and hands-on activities. Join live events with instructors and peers. It’s completely free!
Certificate of Completion
Earn a Certificate of Completion for 8 hours of professional development. Then apply for graduate units from one of our university partners.
Learning Objectives
Master the basics of evaluating sources and spotting misinformation to enhance instruction and support student learning, including:
- Practicing current best practices to assess the accuracy and credibility of online sources in a variety of formats
- Gaining strategies to support student in using search engines and evaluating the quality of online news and information sources
- Understanding what misinformation, disinformation and propaganda are, the dangers of each, and how to combat them
- Creating a lesson plan or online source evaluation activity that build students’ ability to evaluate online sources for accuracy and credibility
Course Curriculum
- Fact-Checking Superpower: Know What to Ignore
- Good-bye, Long Checklists. Hello, Lateral Reading!
- Lateral Reading Basics (0:45)
- Go Deeper Into Lateral Reading (0:54)
- Lateral Reading in Action (10:03)
- Lateral Reading Quiz
- Evaluating Images (7:22)
- Evaluating Video (6:15)
- Evaluating Data (11:42)
- Reflect on Source Evaluation in Your Learning Context
- Assignment: Get Ready to Read Laterally
Enroll now for free!
You will have four weeks to complete the assignments in this course and receive a Certificate of Completion. If you would like to continue to access the course content after those 4 weeks, you are welcome to re-enroll. There is no penalty for taking the course multiple times.
Your Instructors
We support educators in integrating video storytelling, audio podcasts and other media literacy skills into their teaching practice.
Angel Valerio
Angel is KQED’s program manager for STEM professional learning. Previously, she worked in South Los Angeles and East Oakland for 8 years as a high school life science teacher and instructional coach. She is passionate about the intersection of science, social justice, and uplifting youth voice.
Rachel Roberson
Rachel is KQED’s program manager for humanities professional learning. Previously, she was an English and social studies classroom teacher and teacher leader in San Francisco, Oakland, Austin and internationally. Before becoming a teacher, she was a newspaper reporter in the Bay Area.
Rik Panganiban
Rik is the manager of online learning and educator certification at KQED. Rik was the head of Digital Learning at the California Academy of Sciences and the instructional design lead for Science Action Club.
Recommended Learning Path
Ready for more? Try one of these courses next.
About KQED
KQED is a nonprofit, public media station and NPR and PBS member station based in San Francisco that offers award-winning education resources and services free to educators nationwide. KQED Teach is a collection of professional development courses that empower educators to teach media literacy, make media for the classroom and lead media-making projects with students in K-12.
All course content unless otherwise noted is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license excludes all user generated content unless explicitly labeled for reuse by the user. Permission to reuse user generated content should be directed to the individual creator.
Have a question? Email us at [email protected] or check out our FAQ. Find out about our district supports here.