You already know digital content can look and move differently from newspapers and TV. Today the question is different: who can publish online, and what happens when machines can publish too?
You will run a short detective challenge on invented posts, captions and images, then check one real piece of content for yourself.
In a newspaper or TV bulletin, a few editors decide what goes out. Online, almost anyone can publish in minutes, and AI tools can write text or make images too.
Your job today is not a vibe check. It is: who made this, and what evidence can you point to?
Work through the interactive activity as a class. For each invented item, look at the tells (the concrete clues you can point to), then commit to a verdict:
- Human: likely made by a person with little or no machine help
- Machine: likely generated mainly by an AI tool
- Both: a person and a machine both left clear marks on it
Before each reveal, take 20 seconds with the person next to you and both lock a verdict and your strongest tell. Each item has a fair answer you can back up with the tells. The point is your reasoning, not who shouts first. After each reveal, say which tell did the most work for you.
Human, machine, or both?
Now the whole class plays the rest, on your own devices.
Join with the code on the board. Everyone answers every round, not one person per table, and you can change your answer until the time is up. You also say how sure you are: just checking, fairly sure, or certain. The class's split appears on the board once the round closes, then the reasoning.
- Read the item, make your call, and lock it in.
- Your table scores when you get it right together, so talk it through quietly first if you want to.
- When the reasoning comes up, check it against the one you gave.
Getting it right matters less than being able to say why. A right answer earns what you staked and a wrong one loses it, so being unsure and saying so costs you very little - being certain and wrong is what costs. Every round has a defensible answer, and the reasoning behind it is what you are here for.
Class Poll
Now judge one real piece yourself. Unless your teacher has something else on the board, work on this community notice:
Library study spaces open late during exams — posted this week on the county council website. It says late opening runs from 6pm to 9pm on weekdays from the start of the exam period, it is signed by the county librarian, and it links to the council's own opening-hours page.
If your device is already open on a safe example of your own (a post, article, review, image or short clip), you may judge that instead.
- Publisher (person, organisation, account, or "unclear")
- Verdict: human, machine, both, or cannot tell
- One tell that led you there
- One extra check you would run if you needed to be more sure
Be ready to share your piece and your call in one sentence.
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