NLP AR FY21 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 13
Watch the award
presentation and
honoree stories here.
GWEN IFILL
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT OF THE YEAR
GWEN IFILL
MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT OF THE YEAR
Ana Rodriguez
Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini
Archie Williams High School, San Anselmo, California
Central Middle School, Quincy, Massachusetts
Like many teens, Ana Rodriguez, 15, turns to
social media to find out what is going on in
the world.
Mirudulaa Suginathan Yamini, 13, always had
assumed that misinformation did not affect her.
Then, last year she learned how it could fool her
and how fast and how far it can spread.
“A few years ago, I wouldn’t have checked my
sources or the sources the articles that I’m
reading about come from, but now I would
definitely do that because I don’t want to be
sharing false information to the people around
me,” she said.
Rodriguez used Checkology in her 10thgrade English class and learned about bias
and misinformation, helping her complete an
interdisciplinary project. She examined the long
and harmful history of racial bias in scientific
thinking, from eugenics to contemporary
medical discrimination.
“Being able to distinguish reliable information
from detrimental bias has been of great
importance in my life. It has allowed me to help
my parents and other family members during the
COVID-19 pandemic,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said the award “has given me the
sense that I accomplished something very
big, and that I can be successful with the
things that I do.”
“I read a really interesting post and sent it to so
many of my friends. But when I was reading it for
the 10th time or so, I realized it wasn’t real news.
It was fake,” she told NLP.
“I had to tell all the friends I’d sent the post to
stop spreading it and why it’s not credible and not
reliable,” Yamini said. “But it was already too late.
They sent it to their friends and so on.”
When she entered eighth grade, Yamini
used Checkology as part of a media class
and said she feels empowered by her news
literacy lessons.
“I showed my parents many of the tools I saw in
Checkology. Even they felt it was a big impact on
their life. They changed. They stopped viewing
some of the websites that they thought they could
rely on,” Yamini said. And, she added, they were
even more proud of her than before.
2021 Awards
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