What is the Borderline Cases project?
In the Borderline Cases project we set out to educate ourselves on the popular issue of fake news. To become experts, we discovered what goes in to a fake news article and wrote our own fake news stories. We then exhibited our work by teaching visitors how spot and protect themselves from fake news. To get to this point, it took a lot of work and many revisions of the project itself.
In this project we looked to dig deeper at one question: How can I find truth in this crazy world?
In this project we looked to dig deeper at one question: How can I find truth in this crazy world?
Conspiracy Investigators Project
The Borderline Cases project started as the Conspiracy Investigators Project. We were originally going to study conspiracy theories, find out why people believe them and ultimately hoax the whole school. We began by studying famous conspiracy theories and trying to debunk or confirm them. I studied the the conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and how some believed that the CIA orchestrated the assassination. Below is the presentation I created about the conspiracy.
Researching this theory was interesting and challenging because in order to understand it I needed lots of knowledge about JFK and what he did during his presidency. It was challenging but because of my recently discovered love for history, I enjoyed it. At the time I actually started believing the theory. It seemed far fetched, but investing so much time into it began to change my stance.
Now that we have completed the project, I doubt this conspiracy theory is true. Looking back, there was definitely a lack of credible sources supporting the theory. I also know that many times, people create or believe in conspiracies about tragic situations, like the assassination of JFK, because they have to the need to rationalize others' actions.
Now that we have completed the project, I doubt this conspiracy theory is true. Looking back, there was definitely a lack of credible sources supporting the theory. I also know that many times, people create or believe in conspiracies about tragic situations, like the assassination of JFK, because they have to the need to rationalize others' actions.
What do we need to know?
The next step in our project was finding out what we needed to know to become expert "Baloney Detectors". We did this by getting hoaxed. Dr. P created a website about a conspiracy relevant to our school. We were tasked with checking this sources credibility. The website was created on Weebly and it was obvious Dr. P wrote the article. We were quick to conclude it was fake, but when asked to prove its lack of credibility we were stumped. We then knew when faced with questionable sources, we needed to start asking why if was unreliable and learn how to prove it.
Creating our hoax - itech high
Originally, the ultimate goal of the project was to hoax the school. After arming ourselves with skills to debunk conspiracies, we started brainstorming ideas of how we wanted to execute the hoax. My idea was to hoax the school into believing that Apple Inc. had bought High Tech from Microsoft and were going to completely redesign our school into "itech high". Below is the hoax pitch I created with my partner.
What really drove my idea was trying to find a hoax that our peers would care about and believe. I thought my idea would be a successful hoax because the potential of drastic change was relevant to everyone at our school and would cause an emotional response. Eventually my idea was chosen to hoax the school.
The hoax attempt
We began to put our hoax into motion. As the project manager, I worked on creating the foundation of our hoax and making sure the committees in my class coordinated so that the hoax could run smoothly. I really enjoyed my position in the project and was excited to see if we could pull the hoax off.
Sadly, we realized that hoaxing the school was not going to work. With lack of enthusiasm from many students we found the unfortunate truth that hoaxing the school, although super fun, was not meeting our goals for the project. We questioned: Was hoaxing the school going to teach us anything? Was this hoax going to work out or be and utter failure? Making the decision to abandon our hoax plan brought us back to square one. What is our project? Below is my reflection about the project at this point. |
Some of the work I did as project manager
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A new direction - Borderline Cases
At this point, our project became Borderline Cases. We knew we needed to go in a new direction that was more relevant to what we were learning so fake news was the way to go. We needed to further develop our skills in 'baloney detection' so we used a small simulation. We were given a murder mystery where we needed to decide whether the witness's statement was true. We used an evidence/warrant format to help us organize our thoughts and to further develop our claims. At the time the assignment did seem a bit arbitrary but later we realized developing our ability to connect warrants to evidence and evaluating a sources reliability in a simple context helped us when faced with actual unreliable sources.
Below is my final evaluation on the witness's credibility. |
My note catcher for coming up with my evidence and warrants
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What is the biggest threat to journalism?
Next in our project we learned more about journalism and fake news through video lectures from Dan Rather, articles, and class discussions. We learned about what fake news is, its history, why it exists, and the impacts that it can have. We learned about other types of fake news as well, such as native advertising.
We applied the information we learned by finding and creating native advertising and making unreliable websites. We also wrote short essays about what we believed the biggest threat to journalism was.
We applied the information we learned by finding and creating native advertising and making unreliable websites. We also wrote short essays about what we believed the biggest threat to journalism was.
The Final Product
Lastly, we used all the knowledge we gained to write our own deceiving news articles. For my final fake news article I decided to stick with my idea about "itech high". Along with our article, we had to create a list of 'red flags' that revealed all the tells that our article was fake. Although I felt thoroughly prepared to write fake news, it took me multiple drafts to finalize my article. As I got critique from my peers, I learned how to sneak more "red flags" into my article, such as the slight bias towards Apple.
We put our article to the test by trying to deceive 8th graders. My 8th grade partner was pretty convinced by my article. Luckily, I was able to teach him how to look out for some 'red flags' when reading other articles.
We put our article to the test by trying to deceive 8th graders. My 8th grade partner was pretty convinced by my article. Luckily, I was able to teach him how to look out for some 'red flags' when reading other articles.
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My Red Flags
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Exhibition!
The concept for our exhibition was to transform our humanities room into a café where guests would read our fake news articles and learn about spotting and protecting themselves from fake news.
Preparing for our exhibition was quite chaotic. As project manager, I found and delegated tasks that were essential for the exhibition to run smoothly. I was also Dr. P and Ms. Soler's right hand woman. I think did a great job in this position because of my organization and leadership abilities. During the exhibition I had many conversations with guests about the impacts of fake news. I remember many were surprised when realizing they had probably been fool by deceiving articles in the past. I think many people took away some great skills through our exhibition. Although this project was a bit rough due to the unexpected roadblocks we faced, I enjoyed the project. I learned most from the work I did coordinating and planing both the hoax and exhibition. A piece of advice I would give to someone doing an exhibition like ours is try to have the room ready to go the day before. I feel like if we had done this we would have had more time to do the small, last minute things that always come up. |