Easy EdTech Podcast with Monica Burns · Monica Burns

What Teachers Should Know About AI and News Literacy with Dr. Cathy Collins

April 7, 2026·27 min·2 clips

Three major misconceptions are keeping teachers from effectively teaching news literacy in their classrooms.

Dr. Kathy Collins joins Monica Burns to discuss teaching news literacy in the AI era, drawing from her new book 'Teaching News Literacy in the Age of AI: A Cross-Curricular Approach.' Collins, who works as a library media specialist with sixth and seventh graders, defines news literacy as the ability to access, analyze, verify, and create information with civic awareness. She explains how this definition has expanded in the AI age to include understanding information ecosystems, algorithms, and personalization engines that shape what we see online. Collins identifies three major misconceptions educators have about news literacy: that it's only about identifying fake news, that it's inherently political, and that it requires specialized training or too much time. She emphasizes that high-quality news literacy education is nonpartisan and focuses on building habits of mind like curiosity and verification skills. The conversation covers practical strategies teachers can implement across all subjects, including the 'two tabs open' rule where students must check a second source before forming opinions, reverse image searches, and lateral reading techniques. Collins describes hands-on activities where students manipulate historic photos using AI tools like Canva to understand how easy it is to create misleading content. She advocates for a civic-minded, globally-oriented approach that helps students see news as something they participate in rather than something that happens to them. This includes comparing how global events are covered across regions, using news as an entry point for discussing human rights and climate issues, and encouraging students to create their own journalism through podcasts and interviews. Collins stresses that news literacy should be integrated across disciplines, with science teachers helping students verify climate visuals, health teachers addressing vaccination misinformation, and math teachers analyzing misleading statistics. She argues that these skills are particularly important as adults are also falling victim to misinformation. The key message is that teachers don't need to be news experts - they just need to model curiosity and transparency while teaching the critical thinking skills that have always been at the heart of education. Collins concludes that news literacy is ultimately about student empowerment, helping them navigate complexity, question responsibly, and develop healthy skepticism while participating in civic life with clarity and courage.

As heard by us

A steady conversation about AI and news literacy that centers curiosity, transparency, and critical thinking.

Monica Burns treats AI and news literacy as skills that can be taught, not a crisis to be feared. The conversation keeps returning to a practical point: educators already model curiosity, transparency, and critical thinking, so the challenge is less about inventing new habits…

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Why you'd press play

If AI news has your classroom spinning, this gives you a calmer way in.

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