All these fake news that are spreading everywhere like wildfire make it that much harder for authorities to tackle serious problems, like the COVID-19 pandemic.

To solve the issue, a team from Keningau Vocational College has created a three-pronged technique that made them one of the five winners at an international competition!

A big win for the team

According to a report by News Straits Times, the team -- consisting of Alesyah Asa, 18, Nur Syahirah Ariffin, 18, Gabriella George, 18, and Nezatul Fazlyin Zainal, 19 -- ​emerged as one of the winners of the Global Media and Information Literacy Youth Hackathon.

The all-girl team, who called themselves the "Nokuro Sumandak", was listed in the Unesco website as one of the winners in the "community innovation" category.

Their project, a three-pronged technique to tackle disinformation on COVID-19, was described as "an initiative that aims at tackling 'disinfodemic' through classroom activities by integrating media and information literacy in students' learning, created in response to the COVID-19 forced home-schooling".

Alesyah told the daily that said her team created a technique called AIE to help schools tackle the spread of false and misleading information regarding the pandemic.

"The AIE stands for 'accumulate', 'investigate' and 'evaluate', with each respectively using the KWL table, Q-matrix chart and six thinking hats as assist tools."

She added that the project encourages an individual to question more about the topic.

"This is when an individual has to do his or her own 'investigation' such as checking on confirmed cases. The Q-matrix chart is utilised here to help guide in designing own questions for more answers and research.

"Finally, to 'evaluate' is to look into the issue from different perspectives instead of a single viewpoint, such as how the people, in general, feel about the pandemic, its effect, and actions taken by the government.

"The six thinking hats tool in the evaluation will examine an issue from various perspectives," said Alesyah.

The competition, which was co-organised by Unesco and the South Korean government, and supported by IBM, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Population Fund, the European Commission, Sweden, and the Unesco Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, challenges youths to design innovative solutions to address social challenges and tackle misinformation related to the pandemic.

With the win, Nokuro Sumandak will now be able to pre-launch their project globally.