With digital tools, it is easier than ever to create, edit, and publish your work to the world. But there’s a cost. It’s also easier than ever to spread misinformation. And fake news has become a real issue in recent times.

Combining data from a school principal survey with student demographics and achievement data, the present study aimed to develop a much needed understanding of ICT usage in Ontario’s K-12 public schools.

Back in 2015, when we published our lesson plan Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources, we had no way of knowing that, a year later, the Oxford Dictionaries would declare “post-truth” the 2016 word of the year; that fake news would play a role in the 2016 presidential election; that it would cause real violence; and that the president-elect of the United States would use the term to condemn mainstream media outlets he opposes.

Over the last year and a half, the Stanford History Education Group has prototyped, field
tested, and validated a bank of assessments that tap civic online reasoning—the ability to judge the credibility of information that floods young people’s smartphones, tablets, and computers.

This article investigates youth judgments of the accuracy of truth claims tiedto controversial public issues. In an experiment embedded within a nation-ally representative survey of youth ages 15 to 27 (N= 2,101), youth wereasked to judge the accuracy of one of several simulated online posts.

n today’s world, however, the line between real and fake seems increasingly blurred and uncertain. False stories are no longer relegated to tabloid publications but instead have infiltrated more mainstream media sources and social networking services.