What is Checkology?
Checkology helps educators teach news literacy by providing free lessons, challenges, exercises, and missions about today’s challenging information landscape. Students will learn how to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods. All you'll need to get started is an up-to-date web browser.
Registering an educator account
Please note: If your school or district uses Clever, please use the "Sign in with Clever" option on the Checkology sign in page to access your account — you do not need to register. If you try to register using another method and see an error saying your school uses Clever, return to the sign in page and select "Sign in with Clever" to continue.
- Visit checkology.org.
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Click "Register Now."
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Select your preferred sign-in method. You can use one of the single sign-on options (such as Google or Microsoft) so you can login with just a click or you can use "Sign up using email" and set a password. If your district uses Clever, please see the note at the beginning of this article.
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Select your school. Joining with your school means it will be easy to select your colleagues as co-teachers or transfer students across classes in Checkology. Just enter your school's information and select it from the dropdown menu. Can't find your school? No problem. Just select "Can't find a match? Request a new school" and follow the instructions.
Creating a class
Please note: If you are a Clever user, your classes are already created. Use the "Sign in with Clever" option to access them.
To create your first class, click the "+ Add class" button on your Dashboard. From there, enter your class information at the top and then click the green "Create class" button when ready.
You can adjust class settings anytime to help tailor your Checkology experience for your learning environment. Just click "Edit" next to "Class settings" on a Dashboard class tile menu and then click "Open advance settings" to see more options. Remember to press "Save" after making any settings adjustments.
Related articles: Set up a class
Teacher tip:
Set your Checkology video preference according to your school's preferred video streaming service. Checkology videos are hosted on three different platforms: Vimeo, YouTube and Wistia. To switch video preferences, hover over the icon in the top right corner and select "Manage Account" from the dropdown menu and, then, "Video Preference" from the side navigation menu.
Adding students
Please note: If you're a Clever user, your classes and students are added automatically. For issues, contact your Clever admin.
Once you have created a class, you can add students by sharing your class join link with them or by rostering them directly:
- Invite students to join. Send your students your unique class join link and ask them to follow the registration steps. When students click the class join link, they will be sent directly to the student registration page and your unique class code will be auto-filled for them.
- Add students directly. Enter students' names individually or paste a class list in order to register student accounts for them. Checkology will then generate a PDF of student login credentials for you to share with your class.
Please note: Email addresses are optional for student account creation but a valid email address must be included in order for a student to utilize a single sign-on option (Google and Microsoft) for login.
Related article: Adding students
You can check to see who has joined your class by clicking on "Manage" next to "Students" on your Dashboard class tile.
Assigning a course
Courses are collections of news literacy lessons, challenges, exercises and missions. When you click "Assign course," you will automatically be served a "Checkology 101" default course based on your earlier "grade level" selection in the class settings area. To find more information about the default course, click "Preview course." To assign the course, click on the green "Assign to class" button. It will appear purple when your course has been successfully served to your students.
If you would like to browse or assign other courses curated by the News Literacy Project, click "change course." If you would like to curate your own course, click "customize this course." When customizing an existing course or creating a brand new one, you will be prompted to name your new course and then be taken to the course builder.
Once you've assigned a course, your students will be able to access it from their student accounts. Your students will first be prompted to take a short pre-assessment survey to help you see their news literacy learning gains overtime. Once done, they can jump into their first news literacy assignment.
Related articles: Assign a course
Managing a class
Please note: If you're a Clever user, your classes and students are added automatically. For issues, contact your Clever admin.
Even after your class is underway, you can still change your class settings, add and remove students, and edit your course at any time from your Dashboard class tile menu:
You can also use this class tile menu to enter the evaluation area or download a report of student work.