The Squiz tackles misinformation in the classroom with launch of Newshounds 2.0

Squiz Kids, Australia’s number one daily news podcast for kids, will mark Media Literacy Week (Oct 21-25) with the launch of a new and improved version of Newshounds, its free classroom resource for primary school kids, teaching them to spot misinformation when they come across it online.

With more than 3,500 Australian classrooms already signed up to its pilot version, Newshounds 2.0 will seek to engage even more Aussie kids with a streamlined user interface, updated content covering artificial intelligence and a refreshed virtual game board.

Newshounds is proudly supported by the Google News Initiative.

“We launched the Newshounds pilot just over eighteen months ago, to see if there might be an appetite among Australian parents and educators for a free resource teaching lids to spot misinformation when they come across it online,” said Squiz Kids Director, Bryce Corbett. “With over 3,500 classrooms signing up, the response was an emphatic ‘yes’. So we’ve recalibrated, reinvested, consulted with teachers and come up with a new improved version of Newshounds”.

Updates to the Newshounds program include:

• New lessons to tackle the rise of deepfakes and AI-generated content;
• Streamlined user-interface with greater functionality for educators;
• Teacher-friendly features to make it easier for educators to integrate in their lessons;
• A revamped curriculum-mapping tool;
• A fresh new gamified virtual environment for the resource’s protagonist, Squiz-E the Newshound;
• New videos - specially formulated for the classroom environment.
• New classroom workbook and comprehensive teacher manual.

“In its short existence, Newshounds has become the premier media literacy tool for primary school students around the country” said Corbett. “Thanks to seed funding from the Google News Initiative we were able to test the concept of a classroom tool that helps kids learn to tell online fact from fiction. This new version takes all the lessons we learned from the pilot - including from our teacher brains trust - and packages them up in a fresh, easy-to-use online program that any educator anywhere can seamlessly integrate into their lessons.”

Newshounds 2.0 has been devised by Squiz Kids’ resident, fully-qualified primary school teacher in collaboration with its team of journalists, and has been refined in consultation with a brains trust of educators drawn from Newshounds highly-engaged teacher base comprising teachers from NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

“We couldn’t be more proud of the resource we’ve created, or more excited at the enthusiasm with which it’s been embraced by teachers around the nation,” said Corbett.

“Media literacy is more critical than ever. With fake news on the rise and AI complicating what’s real and what’s not, the Newshounds program empowers teachers to make kids critical consumers of the information they see online. We’re excited to be part of this vital shift in how future generations engage with news.”

Squiz Kids is Australia’s premier daily news podcast for kids - engaging over 160,000 Australian kids and their families every month - including in some 5,000 classrooms around the country. Designed for kids, aged 8-12, the podcast delivers kid-friendly news. Just like Squiz Today, it is news without the heavy editorial bias, offering factual, agenda-free content in bite-sized episodes.