What is the Check Center?
The Check Center is where students continue to develop the habits of mind introduced in Checkology lessons and learn digital verification skills so they can fact check information on their own. Students can use the Check Center to:
- Perform quick checks to determine the credibility of a piece of information;
- Learn quick tips, like using CTRL+F to find a piece of text on a page, to make it easier for them to navigate online spaces;
- Learn skills, like reverse image search, that allow them to investigate information they find on their own;
- Act as a resource when completing fact-checking missions (assignable in courses).
(Watch the video or read the article below to learn more about the Check Center.)
Accessing the Check Center
You and your students can access the Check Center in the navigation bar at the top of your Checkology screen. You can also access the Check Center by scrolling down on your main dashboard.
Using the Check Center
The Check Center is divided into two sections: 1) Quick Check and 2) Toolbox.
- Quick Check
- Quick Check guides students through a series of key questions and steps to help them check the credibility of a piece of content. The question prompts and steps change based on what type of information the student is investigating. In the image below, you can see the 5 different types of information a student can check (text claim, image, video, image or video with a claim, and news report)
- Toolbox
- When performing a Quick Check or when working on a fact-checking mission in their course, students may find they need additional support to help them determine the credibility of a piece of content. That is where the Toolbox comes in. The Toolbox contains tips, tutorials and tools that teach students how to be web-literate and to use powerful open-source verification tools to debunk misinformation.
-
The Toolbox is divided into two distinct sections: 1) Tips and 2) Skills.
Use the tabs below to learn more about each section:
The Tips section contains shortcuts that will help students work online more efficiently and quickly, such as CTRL+T for opening a new tab or CTRL+L for highlighting a URL.
The Skills section contains tutorials that walk students through several useful fact-checking tools, such as how to use geolocation to confirm the credibility of a claim or how to use lateral reading to determine the credibility of an article by cross-referencing information on other websites.
Practicing in missions:
Another important purpose of the Check Center is to support students in completing fact-checking missions, which you can assign to your students in a course.
Related article: Assigning a course
Missions are engaging fact-checking challenges that put students' verification skills to the test using authentic examples of information from social media and elsewhere online. While completing a mission, students will be prompted to utilize certain tools introduced to them in the Check Center. For easy access to those tools, students can click on the Toolbox icon in the bottom right corner of the mission screen. If they need a refresher on how to use certain tools, students can always return to the Check Center and review any of the tutorials.
