# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get Minecraft Education for your classroom. Find out how using this game will take your students' learning to the next level.

# data[].attributes.body
The Consortium’s aim is to work in sound, sustained ways with educators and related organizations to inspire, support and advocate for the infusion of critical, creative and collaborative thinking as an educational goal and as a method of teaching and learning.

# data[].attributes.body
By Alan November

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Did he seriously just ask that? How old is this guy?" Well yes, I recently seriously just asked a group of students if they knew how to search Google. And yes, the students got a good laugh from my question.

"Of course I know how to use Google," I have been told by every student to whom I have asked the question.

"Really? Let's see. This won't take long," I promise.

The truth is that every student can use Google on some level. What is interesting to me is that when I interview students about their search strategies and I ask them if they have ever asked their teachers for help with a search the answer is almost always, "No". What if our students are overconfident about their search skills?

If you watch your students use Google you will probably observe that most begin their search by simply typing the title of the assignment verbatim into Google (i.e., Iranian Hostage Crisis). They do this partly because this technique can yield satisfying answers to basic questions, and because in many cases they haven't been explicitly taught to do anything else. It is the easy way out that does not require much in the way of critical thinking.

After their results pop up, most students will look only at the first screen of results, believing that those top hits contain everything they will need to complete their assignment. In many ways, this response is natural - it's quick and easy. If they do not find what they are looking for within three tries they will likely give up and assume that Google cannot fulfill their request.

But what happens when a meaningful search requires more thinking than simply typing in the assignment?
Expert Google search strategies
The internet presents our students with the significant challenge of learning how to access and synthesize massive amounts of information from all over the world. To manage overwhelming amounts of information, it is critical to learn how to design searches that take you past the first page of results. The quality of information can lead to a over simplification of an issue or lead to a much deeper understanding of the nuances of a topic.

In today's global economy, global empathy is one of the most critical skills we must teach our students. To this end, utilizing the internet strategically can lead students to understand other cultures and viewpoints and spark authentic learning experiences. While the internet provides us with the opportunity to explore issues from multiple perspectives and exposes our simplified narratives, the reality of how Google targets basic search often leads to localized results.

The irony of having access to thousands of channels of information is that many of our students seem satisfied when they find the most visually accessible version of the truth. Students must be educated to ask themselves, "How can I design a search or series of searches that yields the highest quality results? As educators, we must equip our students with the skills and strategies to help them develop sophisticated search strategies that will enable them to engage in critical analysis.

Let's take a look at a detailed example assignment, "the Iranian Hostage Crisis."

If you key in "Iranian Hostage Crisis" in Google, and you are in North America, your search in the top screen will yield no sources from Iran, despite the fact that this was where the event took place. Prior to the rise of the internet, omitting Iranian sources may have been completely acceptable and practical in a school setting. There simply were no sources from Iran in the average well-stocked school or town library.

When I challenge students to redesign their search to yield sources from Iran, they usually add the words "Iranian sources" into the search bar. Sadly, this will also lead to zero content from Iran's perspective, and students will continue to be flooded with results detailing a Western version of the event.

Whenever students are researching a problem that involves another country, they should make use of "country codes" and/or use advanced Google searches to limit their search to a particular country. (A list of country codes can be found here. "IR" is the two letter country code for Iran. If students want the shortcut to generate Iranian sources, they can type "site:ir" into the search and the results will be from Iran. ("Site:" is a Google operator that limits results to content in the extension portion of a web address.)

While getting to Iran is just a matter of looking up the two-letter country code and understanding the Google operator "site," the creative part of the search is imagining the Iranian perspective. Essentially all students will type: "site:ir Iranian hostage crisis" after they are taught to limit their search to Iran. At that point, students must be challenged to question their perspective and possible biases: "Do you think the Iranians called this event the Iranian Hostage Crisis?"

This is where Wikipedia can be quite useful. With a quick scan of the Wikipedia article about the Iranian Hostage Crisis, students learn that in Iran the event is known as "The Conquest of the American Spy Den." (Many teachers decry the use of Wikipedia as an authoritative source, and it is true that consulting Wikipedia alone does not represent a comprehensive search strategy. However, Wikipedia may be used to expose researchers to content that can lead students to refine their search.)

Now that we have sorted out the mechanics of accessing the Iranian sources and perspectives, here is the revised Google search:
site:IR Conquest of the American Spy Den
Using this new search, students are presented with an entirely new set of sources, all from Iran. But why stop there? How do we know these sources are credible? What if we could isolate our search to sources from Iranian universities? To access this type of refined search, students can search:

site:ac.ir Chronology of Conquest of the American Spy Den
*The addition of "ac" indicates an institution of higher education, much like ".edu" does for American universities.

Students will notice that this new search has no resemblance to their first, and that the information contained in this latest search offers a vastly different account of the American-named "Iranian Hostage Crisis." Using this new search, students are empowered to access a perspective they may not otherwise have considered. Students have now used Google to gain a perspective than they previously imagined was possible.

When confronted with examples of using the advanced features of Google, the students who previously laughed at the question, "Do you know how to use Google?" are stunned, and in some cases even embarrassed or mad. They wonder why they have never been taught how to perform this type of search. They often are quick to ask: "What else don't I know?"

There is great news in this response. Students do not want to feel inadequate when they use the internet. Once you start to teach them the tricks of deep research they will often ask for more. With some minor adjustments in how we think about and teach basic online research skills, teachers can help create an environment where students take pride in their ability to "zoom in" on a topic as deeply as possible. It makes huge sense for a teacher to ask students to show their search strategies as well as their results. In this way, teachers can gain insights into how students thought about querying a search engine.

You have to love it when students demand to learn more!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Advanced Google Searches Every Student Should Know - November Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Did he seriously just ask that? How old is this guy?" Well yes, I recently seriously just asked a group of students if they knew how to search Google. And yes, the students got a good laugh from my question.

# data[].attributes.headline
November Learning Article: Teaching Zack to Think

# data[].attributes.subject
November Learning Article: Teaching Zack to Think

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
**NOTE: This article was originally written in 1998 and contains many outdated links. For the sake of keeping the story accurate and intact, we are leaving the links as originally written. To view any non-working sites, paste their URLs into the Wayback Machine found at http://www.archive.org.
Is your high school teaching students to access the Internet for research? Then it is essential that students also learn how to validate the information. The Internet is a place where you can find "proof" of essentially any belief system that you can imagine. And, for too many students, "If it is on the Internet, it is true."

The following story is also true.

Fourteen year old: "I'm working on a history paper about how the Holocaust never happened."

Long pause. "Zack, where did you hear that the Holocaust didn't happen?"

"The Internet. It's on a Web page at Northwestern University."

Zack found his "information" from a Web page at http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html, titled "Home Web page of Arthur R. Butz." On his low-key home page, Butz explains that he wrote "A short introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism" and that his material is intended for "advanced students of Holocaust revisionism." At the top of the page Butz identifies himself as "Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University."

His article begins with the following:

I see three principal reasons for the widespread but erroneous belief in the legend of millions of Jews killed by the Germans during World War II: US and British troops found horrible piles of corpses in the west German camps they captured in 1945 ..., there are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland, and historians generally support the legend.

During both world wars Germany was forced to fight typhus, carried by lice ... That is why all accounts of entry into the German concentration camps speak of shaving of hair and showering and other delousing procedures, such as treatment of quarters with the pesticide Zyklon. That was also the main reason for a high death rate in the camps, and the crematoria ...

Look at the above from the perspective of a 14-year-old untrained to think critically about information. He's researching the Holocaust, and suddenly finds this Web page. His teacher told him to find a unique topic, and this certainly fits the bill - he's never heard these ideas before. The page is simple and clear. It's written in a calm, logical tone. The page is clearly intended for experts in its field. Best of all is the source: Northwestern University! And a professor to boot! Perfect.

I'm afraid that kids use the Internet without being taught how to use the Internet. To survive in the future economy, kids must learn how to research, publish, and communicate working with the Internet and other information tools. What skills will be important for kids to learn and for schools to teach? Not how to use Windows or Netscape.

Instead, the most vital skills will involve applying knowledge to produce information and facilitate communication. And one of the most important skills will involve evaluating the resources you decide to use. As much time as we spend teaching kids how to find things on the Net, we need to expend 10 times more effort teaching them how to interpret what they've found.

So how could Zack have applied those skills to Butz's Web page?

Thinking About What We've Found

The fact remains that kids will increasingly depend on the Internet for information. As they use the Web, they need to evaluate their findings using several techniques, which I will place into three main categories: Purpose, Author, and Meta-Web Information.

Purpose

We should always try to ascertain a Web site's purpose. What is it trying to do? Why was it created? Most Web sites are designed to sell services and products, present information, advocate ideas, or entertain. Many sites do several of these at once.

A Web site's purpose will not always be clear. Look at Butz's site. His purpose is surely advocacy, although he comes across as an objective information provider, especially in the closing sentence of his article: "Surely any thoughtful person must be skeptical." Would that ring any warning bells for a 14-year-old? Are ninth graders taught how to distinguish between objectivity and advocacy? Make sure that kids understand the purpose(s) of a Web site, and that those purpose(s) may not be entirely obvious.

Author

The next step in validation involves the site's author. We all know that it's easy to fool people. Many people, especially kids, will believe someone if he sounds authoritative. When I've talked to adults about Butz's Web site, they never fail to point out that Butz is a professor, sure, but he's an Engineering professor. How does that qualify him to speak as an expert on the Holocaust? It doesn't. But people see "Professor" and take what he says as gospel.

Zack didn't know anything about Butz but could have researched his background. ProFusion (http://www.profusion.com) is a multi-search engine that takes queries and searches several search engines at once, including AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo.

If Zack ran a search for "Arthur Butz," he would find Butz's name on a page titled "Holocaust Deniers" at a site called HateWatch (http://hatewatch.org/). Similarly, Zack would find Butz's article listed on HateWatch: An Educational Resource Combating Online Bigotry " (http://hatewatch.org/-follow Online Bigotry-Hate by Category-Holocaust denial). Zack would find Butz mentioned negatively in a March 1998 USA Today article titled, "College anti-Semitism on the rise, according to new report" (http://www.collegenews.com/headlines/news173.htm). Zack would find Butz's book described as popular among "anti-Semites" in a review of Deborah Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust found at http://www.skeptic.com/02.4.siano-holocaust.html. Zack would find Butz mentioned appreciatively on the "Aryan Re-Education Page," at the frightening address of "whitepower.com" (which contains a section for anti-hate sites labeled "The Hall of Shame: JEWS SCUM.").

If Zack had run this multi-search on Butz, he would have seen how other people categorize Butz.

Meta-Web Information

"Meta-Web Information" allows Zack to look at Web sites as part of the Internet; in other words, meta-Web information validates Web pages solely within the context of other Web pages.

Let's start with the URL, or address, of a Web page. Kids need to know when they're accessing a personal home page. Most Internet Service Providers give their subscribers a few megabytes of free space on a Web server to use as they please.

Here are two sample URLs: "http://www.cdsinet.net/users/bartlett" and "http://www.alphalink.com.au/~jdm/index.htm". An experienced Web user knows that both URLs point to personal home pages.

In the first example, the word "users" is the tip off. "bartlett" is the user name of someone who accesses the Internet through cdsinet.net. In the second example, focus on the "~". A tilde - the "~" - indicates a Web site created by someone given space on a Web server. "stefan" is the user name of someone who accesses the Internet through icon-stl.net.

Knowing the above, if Zack looked at Butz's URL - http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html - he'd see the "~," a dead giveaway that this is a personal Web site. Instead of assuming that Butz's Web site was sponsored by Northwestern, Zack would know that it was equivalent to a bulletin board posted outside an office.

Just as Zack can read people by their clothing, he can learn about a Web site by looking at its URL. But even though clothing tells us a lot, the company a person keeps tells us more. Learning how a Web page interacts within the network of all other Web sites is valuable information.

Zack has a powerful tool that can place a Web site in context - the link command.

To apply the link command to Butz, Zack should go to AltaVista at http://www.altavista.com/, type "link:pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/index.html" (without the quotation marks and without a space after the colon), and then click the Search button.

Zack will get nothing. It doesn't work. I don't know why, and it could lead Zack to give up in frustration. He should try this instead: "link:pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/". For some reason, truncating the URL works. At AltaVista, we find out that 879 Web sites point towards Butz's Web page.

The 879 Web sites referencing Butz basically fall into two categories: hate monitors and hatemongers. Among the hate monitors, Butz is a shining example of a Holocaust denier. Among the hatemongers, Butz is a shining example.

One site particularly stands out. I doubt if Zack would have had any problems evaluating Butz after he went to "White Nationalist Links" at http://www.crusader.net/resources/links.html. Once you see who thinks Butz is a great source of information, the game is up. Could there be any doubt when Butz is on the same page as links to Online Fascist Resource Page, Knights of Michigan KKK, White Power Central, and Texas Aryan Nationalist Skinheads?

A Happy Ending

In the end Zack's high school arranged for an interview of a Jewish woman who lived in Europe during World War II. It is always a good idea to look beyond the Internet for sources of authentic information.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching Zack to Think | November Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NOTE: This article was originally written in 1998 and contains many outdated links. For the sake of keeping the story accurate and intact, we are leaving the links as originally written. To view any non-working sites, paste their URLs into the Wayback Machine found at http://www.archive.org.

# data[].attributes.body
By Patricia Finlay

# data[].attributes.body
By Roland Case

# data[].attributes.headline
Professional Readings from TC2: Making Critical Thinking anIntegral Part of Electronic Research

# data[].attributes.subject
Professional Readings from TC2: Making Critical Thinking anIntegral Part of Electronic Research

# data[].attributes.body
By Roland Case

# data[].attributes.headline
Professional Readings from TC2: Introduction to the TC2 Conception of Critical Thinking

# data[].attributes.subject
Professional Readings from TC2: Introduction to the TC2 Conception of Critical Thinking

# data[].attributes.body
By Roland Case & LeRoi Daniels

# data[].attributes.headline
Professional Readings from TC2: Bringing critical thinking to the main stage

# data[].attributes.subject
Professional Readings from TC2: Bringing critical thinking to the main stage

# data[].attributes.body
By Roland Case

# data[].attributes.headline
Professional Readings from TC2: Preconceptions of critical thinking

# data[].attributes.subject
Professional Readings from TC2: Preconceptions of critical thinking

# data[].attributes.body
By Roland Case & LeRoi Daniels

# data[].attributes.headline
Professional Readings from TC2: Taking Seriously the Teaching of Critical Thinking

# data[].attributes.subject
Professional Readings from TC2: Taking Seriously the Teaching of Critical Thinking

# data[].attributes.body
By Roland Case & Ian Wright

# data[].attributes.headline
MediaSmarts: Media Literacy Fundamentals 

# data[].attributes.subject
MediaSmarts: Media Literacy Fundamentals 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is Media Literacy?

Media are powerful forces in the lives of youth. Music, TV, video games, magazines and other media all have a strong influence on how we see the world, an influence that often begins in infancy. To be engaged and critical media consumers, kids need to develop skills and habits of media literacy. These skills include being able to access media on a basic level, to analyze it in a critical way based on certain key concepts, to evaluate it based on that analysis and, finally, to produce media oneself. This process of learning media literacy skills is media education.

The importance of media education in Canada can be seen through the inclusion of media literacy outcomes in provincial and territorial curricula. But defining exactly what media education and media literacy are - and how best to integrate them into the classroom - isn't always straightforward.

This section has been created to clarify what media literacy is all about, and to offer practical suggestions to help you make media education happen

What is Media Education?

Media education is the process through which individuals become media literate - able to critically understand the nature, techniques and impacts of media messages and productions.

Media education acknowledges and builds on the positive, creative and pleasurable dimensions of popular culture. It incorporates production of media texts and critical thinking about media to help us navigate through an increasingly complex media landscape. That landscape includes not only traditional and digital media, but also popular culture texts such as toys, fads, fashion, shopping malls and theme parks. Teachers don't have to be media experts to incorporate media education in the classroom, because it is all about asking questions.

For example:

Who is the audience of a media production and why? From whose perspective is a story being told?

How do the unique elements and codes of a specific genre affect what we see, hear or read?

How might different audiences interpret the same media production? Because media issues are complex and often contradictory, the educator's role isn't to impart knowledge, but to facilitate the process of inquiry.

Today, the chief challenges are to locate and evaluate the right information for one's needs and to synthesize what one finds into useful knowledge or communication. Media literacy - with critical thinking, reflection and ethical behaviour at its core - is a key part of what it means to be educated in today's world.

Why Teach Media Literacy?

Why teach media literacy? Here are ten good reasons:

1. Media literacy encourages young people to question, evaluate, understand and appreciate their multimedia culture. It teaches them to become active, engaged media consumers and users.

2. Media education brings the world into the classroom, giving immediacy and relevance to traditional subjects such as History, English, Health, Civics and the Creative Arts. It serves as a perfect bridge for subject integration and interdisciplinary studies.

3. Media education embodies and furthers current pedagogy, which emphasizes student-centred learning, the recognition of multiple intelligences, and the analysis and management - rather than just the simple storing - of information.

4. Media education is grounded in the sound pedagogical approach of starting learning where kids are at. The media - music, comics, television, video games, the Internet and even ads - are a part of life that all kids enjoy. Media create a shared environment and are, therefore, catalysts for learning.

5. Media education encourages young people to use multimedia tools creatively, a strategy that contributes to "understanding by doing" and prepares them for a workforce that increasingly demands the use of sophisticated forms of communication.

6. In a society concerned about growing youth apathy to the political process, media education engages young people in "real-world" issues. It helps young people to see themselves as active citizens and potential contributors to public debate.

7. In a diverse and pluralistic society, the study of media helps youth understand how media portrayals can influence how we view different groups in society: it deepens young people's understanding of diversity, identity and difference.

8. Media literacy helps young people's personal growth and social development by exploring the connections between popular culture - music, fashion, television programming, movies and advertising - and their attitudes, lifestyle choices and self-image.

9. Media literacy helps children critique media representation, teaching them to distinguish between reality and fantasy as they compare media violence and real-life violence, media heroes and real-life heroes, and media role models and real-life roles and expectations.

10. With most Canadian students turning first to the Internet for research, media education is an essential component of Information Communications Technology education, assisting young people in developing critical thinking skills and strategies for optimizing searches, evaluating and authenticating information and examining issues of plagiarism and copyright.

Key Concepts for Media Literacy

Media educators base their teaching on key concepts for media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. These key concepts act as filters that any media text has to go through in order for us to critically respond. To teach the key concepts to students see the resources in our Media Minutes program.
1. Media are constructions
Media products are created by individuals who make conscious and unconscious choices about what to include, what to leave out and how to present what is included. These decisions are based on the creators' own point of view, which will have been shaped by their opinions, assumptions and biases - as well as media they have been exposed to. As a result of this, media products are never entirely accurate reflections of the real world - even the most objective documentary filmmaker has to decide what footage to use and what to cut, as well as where to put the camera - but we instinctively view many media products as direct representations of what is real.

Who created this media product?

What is its purpose?

What assumptions or beliefs do its creators have that are reflected in the content?

2. Audiences negotiate meaning
The meaning of any media product is not created solely by its producers but is, instead, a collaboration between them and the audience - which means that different audiences can take away different meanings from the same product. Media literacy encourages us to understand how individual factors, such as age, gender, race and social status affect our interpretations of media.

How might different people see this media product differently?

How does this make you feel, based on how similar or different you are from the people portrayed in the media product?

3. Media have commercial implications
Most media production is a business and must, therefore, make a profit. In addition, media industries belong to a powerful network of corporations that exert influence on content and distribution. Questions of ownership and control are central - a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear in the media. Even in cases where media content is not made for profit - such as YouTube videos and Facebook posts - the ways in which content is distributed are nearly always run with profit in mind.

What is the commercial purpose of this media product (in other words, how will it help someone make money)?

How does this influence the content and how it's communicated?

If no commercial purpose can be found, what other purposes might the media product have (for instance, to get attention for its creator or to convince audiences of a particular point of view).

How do those purposes influence the content and how it's communicated?

4. Media have social and political implications

Media convey ideological messages about values, power and authority. In media literacy, what or who is absent may be more important than what or who is included. These messages may be the result of conscious decisions, but more often they are the result of unconscious biases and unquestioned assumptions - and they can have a significant influence on what we think and believe.

As a result, media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. TV news coverage and advertising can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image; representations of world issues, both in journalism and fiction, can affect how much attention they receive; and society's views towards different groups can be directly influenced by how - and how often - they appear in media.

Who and what is shown in a positive light? In a negative light?

Why might these people and things be shown this way?

Who and what is not shown at all?

What conclusions might audiences draw based on these facts?

5. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form

The content of media depends in part on the nature of the medium. This includes the technical, commercial and storytelling demands of each medium: for instance, the interactive nature of video games leads to different forms of storytelling - and different demands on media creators - that are found in film and TV.

What techniques does the media product use to get your attention and to communicate its message?

In what ways are the images in the media product manipulated through various techniques (for example: lighting, makeup, camera angle, photo manipulation)?

What are the expectations of the genre (for example: print advertising, TV drama, music video) towards its subject?

Tips for Integrating Media Literacy in the Classroom

Although media literacy is now a part of the official curricula of every province and territory, it's all too often left out or given cursory treatment in classrooms. This is the result of a variety of factors, such as limited access to equipment, teachers' lack of confidence with the material, and especially the perception of media education as a "frill" in an age of standardized testing and comprehensive curricula.

Here is some advice for making media education a meaningful and integrated part of your classroom practice:

1. Exploit "teachable moments"
When students have free time, take an opportunity to listen to what they're talking about. Most likely, it's related to the media they watch, play and listen to! Breaking news stories, blockbuster movies, and celebrity meltdowns are all great opportunities for media analysis.

2. Give students a chance to create media, not just analyze it
Although there's more to media education than just creating media, this is a key part of it: there's no substitute for hands-on experience to help kids understand how things like editing and music can influence the way a movie or TV show affects us emotionally. Camera phones, storyboards and even magazine collages are all affordable and easy options for bringing mediaproduction into your classroom.

3. Start and end with the key concepts
Media education, and the media world, can feel overwhelming when you start to analyze it. By always coming back to thekey concepts of media literacy you can keep from getting sidetracked as you analyze media products or cultural artifacts.

4. Recognize that kids - and adults - enjoy media
It's important not to take a negative approach to media education. Teach kids thatcritiquing is not necessarily the same thing as criticizing and that we can identify and talk about problematic issues in the media we love without losing our enjoyment of them. Don't forget to look at positive examples when discussing things like gender, stereotyping and so on.

5. Teach about media, not just with media
It's not enough to use media in your classroom unless students are learningabout media as well. Any time you're using media in the classroom, look for a media education opportunity: for instance, if you're showing the movie version of a play or book, have students analyze the differences between the two using the key concepts. How are the commercial considerations of a movie different from those of a book or a play? What technical differences change how the story is told? How are the expectations of a movie audience different from those of a play or a book? How are the film-makers' values and assumptions similar to, or different from, the original author's? How do all of these differences affect the explicit or implicit meaning?

6. Make media education about asking questions, not learning answers
Even though you may feel strongly about an issue or a media product, give your students room to come to their own conclusions. This is especially important when you're dealing with issues such as stereotyping or body image, where your students (and you!) likely already have strong opinions: you need to model the practice of keeping an open mind and using a critical analysis, not your emotions, to lead you to a conclusion.

7. Fight the perception that "It doesn't matter"
Students often try to avoid talking about the implications of media products by saying "it's only a TV show" - or a video game, or a music video, or so on. Remind students that media can have meaning even if the creators didn't plan it, and that we rely as much on the media as on anything else to tell us about the world. For instance, research has shown persuasively that media consumption can affect how we see others and how we see ourselves, even if we don't realize it - a condition known asimplicit or unconscious bias - and the presence or absence of different groups in media has been shown to affect how people feel about those groups.

8. Assess and evaluate media literacy work
"Will this be on the test?" By doing formal assessment and evaluation of the media literacy work students do, you communicate to them that it is valuable and important. Make sure that your evaluations are as well thought-out and objective as they are for all your other assignments, and keep them consistent: when in doubt, return to thekey concepts to gauge your students' knowledge, understanding, insight and skill. See Assessing and Evaluating Media Literacy Work for tips on how to do this.

9. Let students bring their own media to the table
To get students more engaged, look for opportunities for them to do media literacy work with their choice of media products. You can deal with concerns about content issues by making your expectations clear and a part of the evaluation scheme (ethical and responsible use of media is a key part of media literacy) and by having students only present excerpts of media products in group or whole-class settings.

10. Keep up-to-date with media trends and developments
You don't have to be a media expert to teach media literacy, but it helps to be current about what kids are watching, playing, reading, wearing and listening to, not to mention what they're doing online. This is a great opportunity to let kids be the experts and teachyou about the latest thing!

Media Literacy Across the Curriculum

Media education has a place in nearly every course and subject. You can see our Curriculum Charts to get specific information on how each of our lessons and resources meets the curriculum of different courses in your province or territory. Here are some ideas just to get you started:

Social Science: In History classes, students can look at how their views of history and historical events have been shaped by media. Studying films, newspapers and even their own textbooks can help students see how the nature of each medium shapes how history is told. In Geography and World Issues classes, students can analyze how news coverage influences how we view different parts of the world - and the people who live there.

Science: How are students' views of science, and what scientists do, shaped by media? Where does the idea of a "mad scientist" come from, and where do we see this trope today? How do the commercial demands of newspapers and TV news influence reporting of science stories?

Family Studies: How are families depicted in different media? How has this changed with time? Do media portrayals of family follow trends in society, or do they influence them (or both)? What do various media products popular with youth say about gender roles, and how do youth interpret these messages?

Health and Physical Education: What influence does media consumption have on what we eat? How does it affect our decisions about smoking, drinking, and drug use? What kinds of relationships do we see modeled in media products popular with youth, and what messages do youth take from them? How do digital media such as cell phones and the Internet affect our relationships with others, and how can we maintain healthy relationships using these media?

Music: How do the commercial pressures of the music industry affect the creation of music? How are things like gender, class, relationships, or alcohol and drug use depicted in music (and music videos), and how do youth interpret these messages? How do different musical genres and styles (pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, etc.) influence the content of music and music videos? How are musicians portrayed in media, and how does that influence how youth see them?

Law: How do media products popular with youth portray crime and the criminal justice system? How are these portrayals influenced by the values or assumptions of the media creators, by commercial considerations, or by the influence of different genres (cop shows, action games, etc.)? How are digital media affecting our views on issues such as intellectual property, hate speech, harassment and defamation of character?

Visual and Fine Arts: How do artists use, appropriate and deconstruct media products to create new art? What rights and responsibilities do artists have towards the original media creators or owners?

Assessing and Evaluating Media Literacy Work

As with any subject, it's important that work students do in developing their media literacy is assessed and evaluated. Students need regular feedback to be able to reflect on their progress and develop mastery, and this also tells them that the work they're doing is an important part of the course. However, teachers sometimes find it more difficult to create assessment and evaluation tools for media education than for other subjects. This may be because they feel they lack the technical knowledge to evaluate work in the medium in question; it may also be that since media education is all about finding the right questions to ask, rather than learning previously determined answers.

There are two important steps to creating objective, comprehensive and meaningful assessment and evaluation tools for media literacy work. The first is to use an evaluation tool such as a rubric that allows you to assess work in more than one way and that makes expectations clear to students. The second is to frame the expectations within the rubric in terms of the key concepts of media literacy.

In general, media literacy work can be evaluated in three ways:

1. Based on how well the student understands the key concepts of media literacy and the specific concepts and ideas being explored in the lesson or assignment.

2. Based on the depth and quality of the student's inquiry and analysis of the questions raised in the lesson or assignment, as well as the student's thoughtfulness in identifying issues and questions to examine.

3. Based on how well the student applies specific technical skills associated with either the medium being studied (movies, TV, video games, etc.), the medium used in the evaluation tool, or both.

Within each of those four areas, you can create expectations using questions based on the key concepts:

Media are constructions:

Does the student show an understanding of how the media product was created? (Few media products are made by a single author. What were the different contributions of different creators to the final product?)

How well does the student analyze how the creators' beliefs or assumptions are reflected in the content?
Audiences negotiate meaning:
Does the student show an understanding of this concept, and of what elements in a medium or a particular product would be relevant to it? Can the student identify the intended audience of a media product, as well as which other possible audiences might view it differently?

How well does the student identify and analyze the ways that different audiences might view the media product differently?
Media have commercial implications:
Does the student show a knowledge and understanding of the commercial factors influencing the creation of this media product? Does the student show a knowledge and understanding of how the media product was financed and who owns it?

How well does the student analyze how the content of the media product was influenced either by commercial factors or by who created and/or owned it?
Media have social and political implications:
Does the student show an understanding of this key concept? Does the student show a knowledge and understanding of how this medium communicates ideas and values? (For example, what kinds of characters are present and which kinds are absent? Who is shown in a positive light, and who is shown in a negative light? Who is shown as having control over their lives, and who is not?

How well does the student analyze the significance of the conscious or unconscious, explicit or implicit messages identified in a media product?

Each medium has a unique aesthetic form:

Does the student show a knowledge and understanding of the technical elements of the medium and the tropes, clichés, codes and conventions of the medium (TV, movies, video games, etc.) and genre (situation comedies, documentaries, role-playing games)?

How well does the student analyze how the use of these technical elements and genre tropes influence the conscious or unconscious, explicit or implicit messages identified in media product? (How are elements such as music, costuming, and shot composition used to influence our opinion of a character in a movie? How are characters given or deprived of agency, control and power in a video game?)

For all of the key concepts, you can evaluate any work according to the following terms:

How well does the student apply knowledge of the key concepts and of the medium being studied? How well does the student apply knowledge of the medium of the evaluation tool? For instance, if the student is writing an essay about a TV show, he or she would be expected to apply an understanding of how TV shows are created and how they convey meaning, both explicitly and implicitly, and also to apply their knowledge of how to write a successful essay by using an effective structure, well-developed and supported arguments, correct spelling and grammar, and so on. (Successful use of process steps such as editing, checklists and pre-evaluation assessment can be included here as well.) If the product being studied and the evaluation use the same medium - a mock print ad being used to deconstruct magazine advertising, for instance - the student would still be evaluated separately on how they apply their knowledge to analyze magazine ads and how they apply their knowledge to create the mock ad.

Now that you've figured out the expectations of your evaluation tool, you need to determine how students will show achievement. This is often done on a scale of one to four (sometimes represented as "Insufficient" and then numbers one to four). To create a scale, start by writing what you want your students to do in Level Three and work up and down from there. This can be done in two ways:

1. By using exact, quantitative expectations. For example, if you want a Level Three student to successfully identify four ways in which the product communicates messages about gender, then a Level Two might successfully identify three ways, a Level One two ways, an Insufficient one or zero ways and a Level Four five or more ways.

2. By using qualitative descriptions of the work you want to see. If you define Level Three as being competent work, for example, you might define Level Two as developing work, Level One as beginning work, Insufficient as failing work and Level Four as confident work.

Each of the approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses: quantitative expectations are generally better because there is little or no ambiguity, but using them too much can change the emphasis from thinking and analysis to following procedure and "checking all the boxes." Most often you'll use a mixture of the two, using quantitative expectations to evaluate knowledge and application of specific skills and using qualitative expectations to evaluate inquiry and analysis.

For example, a rubric for the "Design a Video Game" assignment in the lesson First Person might look like this:

Knowledge and Understanding

Game design shows an insufficient understanding of diversity issues in video games

Game design shows an insufficient understanding of video game genres

Game design shows a beginning understanding of diversity issues in video games

Game design shows a beginning understanding of video game genres

Game design shows a developing understanding of diversity issues in video games

Game design shows a developing understanding of video game genres

Game design shows a competent understanding of diversity issues in video games

Game design shows a competent understanding of video game genres

Game design shows a confident understanding of diversity issues in video games

Game design shows a confident understanding of video game genres

Game design does not successfully identify any ways in which video games communicate messages about diversity

Game design demonstrates little or no analysis of how commercial pressures and medium and genre characteristics influence meaning

Application of Skills and Knowledge

Game design successfully uses two elements of the medium and genre studied in class

Some game design elements are chosen to effectively communicate the student's understanding and analysis

Game design successfully uses three elements of the medium and genre studied in class

Game design elements are mostly chosen to effectively communicate the student's understanding and analysis

A final tool that is extremely helpful in evaluating media literacy work is giving students exemplars. These are examples of evaluation pieces that show students what you're looking for in a competent work. Annotate the exemplar to make clear what it does right and go through it with the class when you give out the assignment. (Make sure the exemplar is different in some key way from the assignment - an analysis of a different movie, for example - to avoid having students simply copy it.) The easiest source of exemplars is your own students' work, but if you are doing an assignment for the first time you can either create one yourself or have a peer helper or a more senior student create one.

Media Education in Canada: An Introduction

Canada is considered a world leader in this field. But there's still a long way to go before the subject is integrated fully into Canadian classrooms.

Media education is "on the books" with outcomes for media education included across the curriculum and media education programs being implemented in pockets and districts throughout the country. Still, the quality and practice are uneven and media education is not yet widely taught in all provinces and territories or at all levels.

Research findings support the notion that media literacy needs to start at the very early stages of learning. At the elementary level, media literacy education is often "hidden" in the Language Arts strand. It may be referred to as "viewing and representing" or "oral and visual communication". Although it is a mandated curriculum area, teachers at the elementary level have very few resources available to them and very little in the way of professional development to support them. With the disappearance of the school librarian and other specialists in most elementary schools, classroom teachers have become "generalized specialists" in many areas, one of which is media education. Teachers and parents are eager to help their children become media wise, and they are open to new ideas, skills and strategies that will help them in this regard.

Media educators have identified an urgent need to increase professional development opportunities, to update the approach to reflect the digital wireless landscape, and to integrate the disciplines of media analysis and media production across the curriculum in Canada's education system.

PROVINCIAL AND TERRITORIAL OVERVIEWS AND MEDIA EDUCATION OUTCOMES

Media education initiatives vary across Canada. This section provides detailed information on the status of media education for each province and territory, information on provincial/territorial media education organizations, and a listing of media education curricular outcomes, by grade, with links to supporting MediaSmarts resources.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This section looks at the various aspects and principles relating to media literacy. The relationship between media literacy and media education is also explored and tips are provided for integrating media literacy into the classroom in subjects across the curriculum.

# data[].attributes.headline
Center for Media Literacy: Canada Offers Ten Classroom Approaches to Media Literacy

# data[].attributes.subject
Center for Media Literacy: Canada Offers Ten Classroom Approaches to Media Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The following article is from the introduction to the Media Literacy Resource Guide published by the Ontario Ministry of Education in 1989 to guide the implementation of media literacy in language arts in Ontario high schools. The guide was written by members of the Association for Media Literacy / Canada.
Introduction
The teacher's attitude to the mass media and to students as avid media consumers is crucial to the success of any media literacy program. Most students bring to the classroom an enormous amount of information about and experience with the media -- in many cases, far more than do their teachers. While it is important for teachers to start where their students are, it is also necessary for them to lead their students to where they are not.

This guide stresses teaching inductively and beginning whenever possible with students' direct experiences with the media. The basic method of media studies is that of a "spiral curriculum", a concept developed by educator Jerome Bruner. The fundamental principle of this method is that the key concepts of any discipline can be taught in some form to students at any level. Thus, concepts initially introduced in simple form at the elementary level are, in successive years, explored, developed, and extended in increasingly sophisticated ways as the student matures and develops.

To take a relatively simple example, elementary school pupils might begin to explore the concept of the commercial implications of media by talking about television programs they watch and, with the guidance of the teacher, distinguishing between program material and commercials, identifying the different purposes of each. At a later stage they could look at a variety of commercials aimed at children, discussing their reactions to them and perhaps beginning to evaluate their effectiveness. They could also talk about what they would put in commercials for children if they were making them. Older children could begin to analyze the techniques and appeals of commercials, planning and storyboarding some of their own. They could also explore the relationship between commercials and programming, perhaps examining the link between children's cartoon characters and sales of related products such as dolls or clothing. As they progress through the educational system, they may move on, for example, to more detailed examinations of commercials; studies of the effects of economic considerations on programming, content, and techniques; or research into issues such as the effects of ownership and control media.

Because students are immersed in media, the role of the teacher must be that of a facilitator and a co-learner. The teacher must help students to negotiate meaning, engage in inquiry and research, identify patterns, and create their own media productions.
Stress the Positive
It is important to stress the positive features of the mass media rather than to dwell at length on the negative. It is also essential that students be encouraged to explore the values and the tastes that are relevant to their own immediate cultural context. This fundamental premise of values education implies that the teacher should not be imposing a set of elitist values on the class. (For example, the teacher should avoid holding up "Masterpiece Theater" and PBS as caviar and everything else as junk food for the masses.)

It may be difficult to find socially redeeming values in many of the programs that have high audience ratings or in rock videos, but it is these very examples that our students are eager to discuss. Using media literacy in critical discussion, the teacher can empower students to discover meaning on their own, thus giving them critical autonomy.

Because of the immense diversity in the media and the sheer quantity of information, teachers may feel overwhelmed. This resource guide offers a whole range of coping strategies. First, many avenues for media literacy are already available. For example, most subject disciplines offer approaches to the topic, and many of the activities suggested in this document are ideally suited to the development of speaking, listening, and writing skills. Second, this guide encourages a plurality of approaches, including the application of interdisciplinary perspectives and critical- and creative- thinking strategies.

By necessity, media teachers will be eclectic. As well, the constantly changing content of the media and of popular culture, along with their many new and evolving forms and technologies, will necessitate the concept of "a movable text" that is made up by the teacher, the class, or both together. Such a text will encompass current newspaper and magazine clippings, new video, audiotapes, record albums, and resource people from the community. In such an enterprise, it should be evident that media study is ideally suited to the collaborative strength that is gained from team teaching.

To avoid duplicating activities and audio-visual materials each year, teachers, department heads, and principals will have to plan a coherent and, in many cases, a sequential media-studies program. This may prompt the formation of board media-literacy committees, which can organize workshops for teachers and design media curricula especially suited to local needs.

Teachers not familiar with essential equipment such as slide projectors and the video-cassette recorder will need to develop the competency required to make media literacy worthwhile for their students. For example, effective use of the freeze frame or the scanning mechanism on a VCR can enhance the use of video considerably.

Throughout the guide there are many opportunities for practical media production, an important dimension that complements the application of the key concepts and decoding exercises. Practical activities should never become an end in themselves; otherwise, the critical inquiry that is central to media study may be ignored.
SPECIFIC APPROACHES

1. The Inquiry Model
The inquiry model is a structured framework that will help students recognize basic issues and provide strategies for developing subject content. This model helps to stimulate open questioning and encourages students to be intellectually curious about the world; it also demands that they have the proper tools for meaningful research and discussion. Since many of the topics that interest students (e.g., censorship, bias in news coverage, popular culture trends) need to be focused as soon as possible, this methodology is ideally suited to media study.
The inquiry model is especially suited to the introduction of media-literacy activities in the classroom. For example, one can easily apply the model to a provocative short film, a television documentary, or an excerpt from a feature-film video that reveals a powerful moral dilemma. Through an intense shared experience that raises a whole range of issues, students are enabled to see the value of a structured framework for facilitating focused research and critical thinking.

The inquiry model might be used, for example, to explore the following question: "Why do Canadians seem to prefer American media?" The following alternative solutions might be investigated:

Media content, from films to television, is predominantly American in origin.

American programs are generally cheaper to buy; have better production values, which reflect lavish budgets; and have a faster pace than do most Canadian programs.

Quality Canadian programs may reflect our identity, but most Canadians' indifference about or insecurity in this area compels them to avoid endeavours that hold up the mirror to our society.

Intense competition in the United States ensures that only the most salable commercial products are seen.

Students might then explore the alternatives by collecting data in the following ways:

Statistics are available in resources on the Canadian film industry, such as Cinema Canada [Editor's note: is no longer in publication] and from the reports of various commissions on broadcasting and the film industry.

Students could check with Canadian television networks on the comparative costs of buying an American show - especially those in reruns - and of producing a Canadian series. Students could watch some typical Canadian shows and compare them with the American product in order to notice differences in themes, characterization, and pace.

Students could check the ratings of one of the better Canadian television series and the box-office take for some of our critically acclaimed films. In addition, by formulating a questionnaire and having a cross section of people answer it, students could determine whether the results confirm or deny the notion that Canadians are indifferent to or insecure about seeing their identity portrayed.

Students could write or talk to Canadian media professionals regarding the allegations about the benefits of competition in the United States.

2. Critical-thinking strategies
The critical-thinking movement in the 1980s has helped to provide some important strategies for teachers of media literacy. According to Robert Ennis, critical thinking refers to a body of intellectual skills and abilities that enable one to decide rationally what to believe or do. It also includes a set of values: the pursuit of truth, fairness or open-mindedness, empathy, autonomy, and self-criticism. A "strong sense" critical thinker is one who strives to live in accordance with the values of critical thinking and who is able to think dialogically. A typical mass-media issue involves a blending of intellectual, affective, and moral responses. Many issues carried in the media demand that we move back and forth between opposing points of view. It is here that good dialogical thinking can help us out. Dialogical thinking involves a dialogue or extended exchange between points of view or frames of reference. The following checklist of typical critical- thinking skills is reproduced from Robert Ennis, "A Concept of Critical Thinking,"Harvard Educational Review, Winter 1962: 38.Critical-Thinking Checklist:

distinguishing between verifiable facts and value claims

determining the reliability of a claim or source

determining the accuracy of a statement distinguishing between warranted and unwarranted claims

detecting bias identifying stated and unstated assumptions

recognizing logical inconsistencies

determining the strength of an argument

Teachers interested in more information on these approaches should consult current books and articles on critical thinking in educational journals such as Educational Leadership and Phi Delta Kappan.

3. Values education
The mass media are an ideal resource for the discussion of moral dilemmas, the development of moral reasoning, and the use of techniques such as values clarification. Dialogical reasoning, which has been described as an important part of critical thinking, can play a significant role in discussions of topics such as the pros and cons of the mass media, government control of media, censorship, advertising, and the moral values identified in popular television and films. Consult the bibliography in the ministry's resource guidePersonal and Societal Values (Toronto: Ministry of Education, Ontario, 1983) for further information on values education.

4. Media from the perspective of subject disciplines
In relation to media-literacy analysis in a subject context, it is important to stress that teachers will need to move beyond conceiving of media simply as audio-visual aids. Ideas that teachers can use to incorporate media literacy into their classes include:

English - Film-literature comparisons, script writing and multimedia thematic units (ie. exploring how themes such as the nature of courage, the hero and comedy are expressed in various mediums).

Social Sciences

History - Presentation of historical figures, historical bias and point-of-view, the marketing of politicians, and propoganda.

Geography - Comparisons of the images of cities in films and TV to the socio-economic realities of those cities; deconstruction of travel films; bias in films made by governments or corporations; depiction of countries as portrayed by governments vs. "structured absences," images that are not included in the official portrayal.

Family Studies - The representation of the family in advertising and film; sexuality and sexual stereotyping in the media; and the culture of violence.

Science and Technology- In addition to their treatment in science fiction, there are numerous references to science and technology in newspapers, films, magazines, and novels. Television, in both news and entertainment programs, constantly packages scientific issues and information. Some of this material can be integrated into the science curriculum by pointing out connections between the scientific issues raised by the media and the scientific principles underlying them. Students can also explore the strengths and limitations of the presentation of science topics in the media.

Visual Arts - The possibilities for media literacy in the visual arts are enormous. Many of the decisions made in the media are based on aesthetic considerations. The role of art in a mass-media-dominated society is of major concern for aspiring artists. Art teachers need to assess more than just the principles of pleasing form when looking at media; they need to consider all of the aspects that have been outlined in the section on key concepts in Visual Arts, Intermediate and Senior Divisions, Curriculum Guideline (Toronto: Ministry of Education, Ontario, 1986).

Music - Students are immersed in rock music and rock videos. While some music teachers use rock as a resource, many consider it inappropriate for their music courses. However, there are many valuable connections that can be made through the comparison of traditional and popular music. The popular-music enables music teachers to help their students investigate the aesthetics, the value messages, and the commercial implications of this pervasive form.

Physical and Health Education - Representation of gender, sexuality, violence, and televised sports in the media are all avenues that can be explored in the classroom.

Mathematics - Teachers of mathmatics will find that a great deal of research in the mass media depends on statistics. Hence, the skills of compilation and graphing will be important. In the area of television, the methods of rating the most watched prime-time programs depend on the exact use of mathematical information.

Resource Centre Teachers - Today's resource centres contain not only books, but also a good cross-section of popular periodicals, phonograph records, slides, and audio - and videotapes. In the area of print, many periodicals, such as Time and Maclean's, require not only the traditional reading skills, but also media-literacy decoding skills as well. Resource centre teachers can play a valuable role by helping students and teachers to understand the strengths and limitations of each medium when they are selecting resource materials.

5. Cross-media studies and interdisciplinary strategies
The issues, trends, and special events of our time are simultaneously reflected in all or several of the mass media. Hence, whether the topic is the arms race, the promotion of a rock star, an advertising campaign, or sexuality and violence in the media, a cross-media analysis is required. The effective application of the key concepts of media depends on the integration of several media. A discussion of violence in the media, for example, might combine knowledge from history, literature, sociology, psychology, communications theory, and linguistics.

6. Creative experiences
As well as being able to "decode" the symbols that dominate their society, students should be able to "encode" them. Just as we must integrate writing with the development of reading skills, we should integrate formal media analysis with media production. Thus, creative or production activities should be an essential component of media studies in the classroom. These creative activities can range from something as short and simple as sequencing a series of photographs to a project as complex as the production of a rock video. Many students will grasp the analytic material only if they have undergone production experiences.

7. Semiotics
Semiotics is the science of signs and is concerned primarily with how meaning is generated in film, television, and other works of art. It is concerned with what signs are and the ways that information is encoded in them. Some of the decoding/deconstructing activities in this guide use strategies from semiotics. This approach, which has had considerable influence on European academics and media teachers, is now coming into its own in North America. While it may appear to be intellectually demanding and somewhat abstract, it can yield many rewards for the dedicated media teacher. The following books are useful references in this area: Roland Barthes,Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972); James Monaco, How to Read a Film; Robert Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).

8. Reading the media environment
Each medium of communication has its own biases and ideology. When we interact with a medium of communication, we are influenced as much by the form of the medium as by its message. To explore this notion further, we should ask the following question about each communication medium: What would life be like without this medium? Finding answers to the following questions might also help us to understand better the effects of our interactions with our media of communication:

How does it work (e.g., technically, physiologically)?

When/how was it discovered/invented?

How did its use develop (e.g., socially, economically, politically)?

Who are its outstanding users? What do they communicate? How?

What are the medium's present conventions? How did they develop?

What are its present limitations? How are they best exploited?

How does the medium affect its users and how do they affect it?

How have other media affected this one?

9. Alternative points of view
As a counter to the mass media, which are generally, conservative and constitute a major industry in which the profit motive is paramount, teachers, depending on the level of the class, can show films and videos that present an alternative vision or a different kind of perception and experience to that of the mainstream media. These should be a supplement to, and not take the place of, the study of popular models. Many excellent narrative and documentary films by the National Film Board of Canada and by many experimental filmmakers and video artists, for example, will challenge students' ways of seeing the world. Of course, good literature and art will do the same. Certainly contemporary culture can be illuminated from many sources: by a small-circulation magazine with a distinctively alternative point of view; by a provocative CBC radio documentary; by a record of a contemporary fusion jazz combo, a small independent rock band, or the work of a performance artist/musician such as Laurie Anderson.

10. Full-credit courses in media literacy
These courses, offered at the secondary school level, will probably be presented as one of the optional courses in English or the visual arts and will reflect a great diversity of approaches. The following are examples of areas covered by such courses:

Pop culture: An understanding of some of the following: popular culture and trends; the coverage of royalty; the appeal of the current rock megastars; pop culture's fascination with rituals; the nature and power of celebrities; fashion TV (television programs that are concerned with the world of fashion, showcasing the latest trends and profiling fashion designers); fast-food happiness (the extensive marketing of fast-food restaurants through advertising campaigns that convey the idea that such eateries bring happiness by solving all one's problems); fads - from pet rocks to Cabbage Patch dolls; the appeal of shopping malls; pop culture in a foreign country; the culture of toys; the appeal of cult film patterns in teen films; formulas in best sellers; the appeal of Harlequin romance novels; the pop culture of the fifties and sixties.

The world of images: Media images of men and women; analysing photographs; adolescent magazines; analysing advertisements - signs and codes; dividing the world.

The information society: Current theories and research on the impact of the electronic media; the theories of Marshall McLuhan regarding the global village, the nature of perception, and the use of our senses; the dynamics of third-wave technology (electronic technology and the use of computers); the computer revolution; the role of new and emergent technology.

The study of specific media or a genre within a medium: Course units are often devoted to in-depth study of a specific medium (e.g., film, television, the newspaper). The study of a medium can be subdivided further through the study of specific genres. A unit on a genre in films might explore the nature of horror films in radio, suspense drama; in television, the evolution of sitcoms.

Television production: The nature of the television medium; the dynamics of television production; script writing and storyboards; the use of the portable video camera; the creation of a mini-documentary and a commercial; the use of special effects; applications of the mobile studio."

A Scaffolding Approach to Media Education
Scaffolding, developing a unit of study through a set sequence of steps, is well suited to Media Education. Scaffolding involves:

1. Providing students with an overall picture of what will be expected of them.

2. Breaking up and sequencing the order in which various concepts, skills, and applications of skills will be taught and assessed.

3. Checking for students' understanding of what is being taught and requiring students to complete parts of the project as we go along.

4. And finally the product -- student demonstration of their understanding and teacher and/or peer evaluation of their understanding.

If, for example, students are going to do a presentation giving an analysis of the codes and conventions of sitcoms, ideally the scaffolding would proceed this way:

1. Model what such a presentation would look like.

2. Teach them the relevant codes and conventions.

3. Practice identifying codes and conventions in various sitcoms. (Allow students repeated opportunities to apply what they are learning so they can integrate that knowledge into their presentations.)

4. Require them to research and put together their presentation.

5. Before students present their work, have them submit an outline, including notes or ideas for what they intend to use.

6. Finally, present of students' understanding and evaluation of this understanding. (See Evaluating Media Products for evaluation ideas.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Canada Offers Ten Classroom Approaches to Media Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The following article is from the introduction to the Media Literacy Resource Guide published by the Ontario Ministry of Education in 1989 to guide the implementation of media literacy in language arts in Ontario high schools. The guide was written by members of the Association for Media Literacy / Canada.

# data[].attributes.headline
From Now On The Educational Technology Journal: Deep Thinking and Deep Reading  in an Age of Info-Glut, Info-Garbage  Info-Glitz and Info-Glimmer 

# data[].attributes.subject
From Now On The Educational Technology Journal: Deep Thinking and Deep Reading  in an Age of Info-Glut, Info-Garbage  Info-Glitz and Info-Glimmer 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From Now On
The Educational Technology Journal

Vol 6|No 6|March|1997

Deep Thinking and Deep Reading
in an Age of Info-Glut, Info-Garbage
Info-Glitz and Info-Glimmer

Abstract
According to Birkerts ( Gutenberg Elegies, 1994), the search for truth requires deep reading and deep thinking. While the arrival of new electronic information technologies threatens to overwhelm us with info-glut and info-garbage, the post-modem school will raise a generation of highly skilled "free range students" capable of simultaneously grazing the Net and reading deeply. To achieve this goal, schools must make a dramatically expanded commitment to questioning, research, information literacy and student-centered classrooms. Students will need a radically different skills array to negotiate this new information landscape.

I. Introduction

The search for truth should be the central focus of learning and schools. Deep reading and deep thinking are dual processors which inform such a search and lead us toward insight and illumination.

Much of the recent talk of Information Highways and the Internet misses the point. This opportunity is all about learning to make meaning with courage and independence from vast resources of variable quality and reliability.

If the business of schools in a smokestack age was teaching and imparting information, we must now shift to a focus upon learning.

Despite the hoopla and the hype, making meaning in the Information Age is not all it is cut out to be.

The implications for those who work in the so-called "knowledge industries" - schools, colleges, publishers, researchers, etc. - are immense. Our work must shift dramatically in focus and purpose.

Young people will be finding out about their worlds in ways which differ considerably from the learning of decades past. Because this learning will require great independence, skill and courage, teachers must redesign schooling to show students how to make their way across this new landscape.

Those who produce the resources face an equally daunting challenge, as it will no longer suffice to offer information like processed cheese in the form of textbooks or other outmoded and linear information delivery systems. Producers must now devote much more attention to "user interfaces" - the ways their information can be packaged and presented for exploration by their clients.

The single most important change in the knowledge business will be the centrality of independent exploration and knowledge creation by clients.

Sources will no longer be static and fixed. They will be dynamic, open and available.

Clients will select and (pay for) the palette over the mural, the toolkit over the finished work.

Spend a few hours navigating through the brave new world of electronic information resources and you may feel like a character in Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass. You may find yourself running twice as fast to stay where you are or you may end up sharing tea with the Mad Hatter.

We have more information available than we can possibly digest or consume or fathom. We pass from a smokestack age which was information lean to an age of info-glut and info-garbage. As the flow of information increases, so does "noise" in the system, and Truth becomes ever more elusive, much like the famed "butterfly of love."

This is no time for rule-bound behaviors or reliance upon memorization. The prize will go to those who can make it up "on the fly," those who can invent new realities as fast as we need them.

These Post Modern times call for Post Modem Schools ( see the October, 1996 issue of From Now On) which will raise a generation of highly skilled "free range students" capable of simultaneously grazing the Net and reading deeply. Such schools will offer vastly expanded opportunities for questioning, problem-solving and research. All students will spend much of their time thinking deeply.

II. Grazing Your Way into Deep Reading

What is Deep Reading ?

I am indebted to Sven Birkerts for his great writing and thinking about this concept of Deep Reading. In The Gutenberg Elegies (ISBN 0-449-91009-1 - Fawcett Columbine, NY, 1994) Birkerts explains that Deep Reading has its historical roots in the times before the printing press when there were very few books owned by very few people. The book was most likely something like a Bible which would be read over and over, with certain passages being "revisited" repeatedly in the search for understanding. The more metaphorical and poetic the language, the more satisfying and challenging the return visits.

Birkerts maintains that it is such contemplative, probing and reflective reading which lies at the heart of the search for truth . . .

A sense of the deep and natural connectedness of things is a function of vertical consciousness. Its apotheosis is what was once called wisdom. Wisdom: the knowing not of facts but of truths about human nature and the processes of life. (Page 74 )

Birkerts points out that the arrival of the printing press resulted in the production of far more books on many topics for far more people, a change which made possible what he calls "horizontal reading" - a far ranging kind of information harvesting which can work very effectively to inform the kinds of thinking associated with Deep (or vertical) Reading.

With the right balance, the information gathered by horizontal reading fuels the thinking characteristic of deep reading. But that is the problem we now face . . . balance.

The trouble comes with the arrival of mass media and electronic text, as the proliferation of information leads to what is often called info-glut. Birkerts fears that the easy availability of mountains of information threatens the deep thinking process mentioned earlier . . .

Swamped by data and in thrall to the technologies that manipulate it, we no longer think in these larger and necessarily more imprecise terms. In our lateral age, living in the bureaucracies of information, we don't venture a claim to that kind of understanding. Indeed, we tend to act embarrassed around those once freighted terms --- truth, meaning, soul, destiny . . . (Page 74)

One of the most notable (and often unnoticed) challenges facing schools in this Age of Information is the preservation of a healthy balance between the types of reading, maintaining a firm commitment to the search for truth and meaning.

The Information Feast as Pot-Luck Supper

Most of us have experienced enough pot-luck suppers to know that we must walk up and down the 200 hundred foot long table of dishes to "graze" and "browse" the contents before loading up our plates.

If we could only teach our colleagues and students to apply the same approach to the vast information feast set before us!

We know the folly of rushing to the table and loading without glancing ahead . . . mounds of food (information?) which go untouched - not to mention vast opportunities unrealized and untasted. Our plates are loaded up before we can make it past the first twenty feet.

We see students doing the same thing with information, downloading and saving files in a great rush of data gorging which rarely includes reading. Hundred of files and pages accumulate without sorting, sifting or discrimination. They search the Web, find twenty thousand hits and light up with joy. Confusing quantity and sheer volume of information with success, they greedily scoop up everything within their reach, saving it for later.

We must beware of a "buffet mentality" when we step up to the information feast.

At the same time, we should hardly be surprised by this gorging. After all, for decades these students have been asking teachers "How long must it be?" Most of us asked the same question when we were students. We once gave the impression that length and wisdom were related. And now we pay the price.

Perhaps we need to replace that old message with "less is more." Wisdom has more to do with distillation and reduction than volume. While we may want to search widely, we must harvest sparingly and wisely.

When does deep reading begin?

Good teachers have been using good literature for decades to inspire deep thoughts in children about moral dilemmas and essential questions about human existence.

We know that good stories, like parables, may carry great weight and that even very young children may engage in very deep thought.

I recall my days as a teacher of four year olds in Sunday School. My text was often a Frog and Toad story which raised lofty and significant questions about what it means to be a loyal and caring friend. These stories were far from simple in their meaning, even though the words were simple.

One day Toad loses a button while out walking and leads his friend Frog through a fruitless, cranky and frustrating search - retracing the steps of an earlier journey - before discovering that the button was at home. Chagrined, he makes a special jacket for Frog decorated with all the buttons they gathered along the way. Synthesis rules!

Many of these four year olds carried that story with them through the days after hearing it. They were capable of doing deep reading. Even at that age, they had the thirst as well as the capacity to reach for illumination and insight.

What does it mean to be "well read" in the nineties?

Does "well read" mean something different than it did a decade ago?

Absolutely!

"Well read" now requires concurrent breadth and depth hitherto unimaginable. We gather from much richer and broader sources than before. We probe, analyze, and synthesize more powerfully than ever.

This new reading requires multi-tasking and the support of "intelligent agents." One grazes, harvests, prospects, mines, ponders and smelts all at the same time. One also enlists the services of "intelligent agents," "knowbots" and "search engines" to ensure a continuing barrage of important new information skimmed sizzling off the networks as fast as it hits the wires.

A decade ago we could not train these intelligent agents to seek and harvest for us. A decade ago, we could not count upon an electronic stream of timely digests tailored to our needs, our interests and our essential questions. We could not extend our reach or our searches beyond what now seems like a relatively parochial sphere.

Thankfully, just as we have more information than ever before, we have more information power than ever before. It is almost like someone gave us a combination wide angle and telephoto lens to zoom in and out, all at the same time.

How do we "graze our way into deep reading?"

"Deep reading" in Birkert's sense does not require continuing active eye contact with printed or electronic text. It may be contact with text or it may be reflection aimed at resolving some unanswered question, issue or dilemma.

Certain essential questions remain active in the background of our minds, simmering at all times. While it may be subconsciously, we are usually "working on" these items at all times, whether we be running, showering, chatting with a friend or watching TV. Some part of our mind is trying to rearrange, digest and resolve the bits and pieces into meaning. The mind keeps working to achieve some truth or insight.

To keep working with any power, the mind requires and enjoys periodic surges of new information to keep the "pot stirring." Grazing delivers that flow.

Grazing is far reaching searching. It is part locating, part gathering and part automating. The goal is to locate now and in the future every byte of information which might cast light upon our most important questions and issues.

With the old reading, grazing mainly meant collecting. Now we can train intelligent agents to keep the information coming from good sources almost like a pump which keeps oil flowing from a successful an well. The original prospecting leads to a lasting stream.

While there are many different ways to create these fountainheads, several examples will illustrate how this process works:

1. The ZINE on a Special Interest

A ZINE is an Internet MagaZINE which may be sent by e-mail to subscribers on a monthly, weekly or daily basis. The skillful grazer signs up for a half dozen of these which are pointedly related to the grazer's essential questions. Because most of these contain a tidy table of contents in their headers, the grazer can quickly scan them upon arrival to see if there are any stories below actually worth reading and digesting.

Breaking edge developments arrive continually. "Just in time knowledge!"

For those interested in the World Wide Web, for example, there are several excellent ZINEs such as . . .

N E T S U R F E R D I G E S T

http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html

For a major listing of other ZINES, go to this page.

2. The ListServ on a Special Interest

ListServs can serve a similar purpose and function by setting up a flow of messages on a particular topic of special interest. ListServs are electronic communities allied by a common interest or concern. There are listervs for librarians, history teachers, school administrators, barbershop quartets, antique lovers, lawyers and all kinds of people.

One you join a listserv, you will receive a copy of any e-mail message sent to the list each day. many listservs generate as many as a hundred message a day. While the subject of many of these messages may be unimportant and quickly deleted, others may prove extremely worthwhile and timely.

As with ZINES, The skillful grazer signs up for a half dozen listservs which are relevant to the grazer's essential questions. As the messages start arriving, the grazer employs an e-mail "filter" program (such as Eudora Pro) which can automatically sift through and highlight messages on the most important topics. The trick is to minimize time wasted with trivia and maximize time spent with treasures.

DejaNews provides a good search mechanism to locate listservs and newsgroups. (http://www.dejanews.com/)

Liszt , the mailing list directory (http://www.liszt.com/) With Liszt's searchable and browsable directory of over 80,000 mailing lists, you're sure to find the perfect e-mail discussion group for your personal or professional interest.

For a list of education-related listservs you may wish to consider joining go to this site . (http://edweb.gsn.org/lists.html)

For a global (huge - 759K) listing of all listservs go to this site . (http://mailserv.cc.kuleuven.ac.be/intgroups/globlist.html) Warning: this file may take 10 minutes to load and offers no annotations.

LISTSERV User's Guide - a manual which explains how to join a listserv and how to participate (http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html)

3. The Customized E-Mail News Digest

News sources such as the New York Times will allow you to request periodic digests on topics of interest. You can determine the frequency and the content of these digests.

Concerned about censorship on the Internet? Enter that topic and that category in your personal profile and you will be able to count on all the news that's fit to e-mail on that topic as the news breaks.

As a subscriber to The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/ on the Web you can now have a graphical "section front" and links to articles that match the keywords provided in your "personal search" delivered to your e-mail daily.

4. The Customized Info-Rich Screen-Saver

Products like Pointcast(http://www.pointcast.com) deliver headline news and updates to the desktop as they happen, providing a constant stream which is free and customizable.
Pointcast boasts . . .`

Interested in news in your particular industry? How about your own personalized stock ticker. Receive just the news and information you care about. Or the weather in Cleveland, Santa Fe and New York. Maybe Rio or Rome. What do you want to know? PointCast hands it all to you on a rainbow platter.

Headlines move dynamically across the screen, the colors pop and all you have to do is keep your eyes open. Effortless. No surfing required.

5. The Intelligent Vigilant Search Engine

If you are willing to pay for it, you can subscribe to online services such as IBM's infoSage http://www.infosage.ibm.com/ - available at $24.95 per month. For this fee, you receive two news deliveries each business day based upon a personal profile of information needs. infoSage employs that profile to scan a wide range of premium resources every day to find relevant news items and then sends you e-mail digests.

The brain is like a hungry Polar Bear, requiring a good sized chunk of new information from time to time to fuel its deep reading. The skillful grazer scours the information flows just as the Polar Bear ranges across the ice flows in search of seals, but unlike the Polar Bear, the grazer can now delegate and automate much of the hunting. New information technologies allow more time and energy to be devoted to actual thinking, as gathering becomes semi-automatic and the mind can take advantage of parallel processing.

III. Reading Your Way into Deep Thinking

As information accumulates in packets or messages, pages or books . . . as it arrives in our mailboxes or piles up upon our desktops (wooden or computer) and front porches, we must find ways to read our way into deep thinking. This reading is a matter of sorting, sifting, selecting, ingesting and then digesting the most important parcels and morsels.

The mind moves what started as raw material through a series of mental "stomachs" which convert raw data into meaning. The mind reads through the data looking for patterns and connections, extracting the "nutrients," establishing relationships with prior knowledge and building bridges to new perceptions.

Incubation . . .

We are looking for something. Perhaps it is a new idea . . . a new product . . . a new way of approaching an old task. Maybe we are trying to understand something as difficult as the impending death of a parent or a friend. We keep churning through the raw material we have gathered in search of new meanings.

Making our way toward inspiration and illumination - the "Aha!" phenomenon - usually requires much time and a supportive environment, an incubation period during which the elements of the new idea dance and spin around each other in a mental courtship.

This incubation process usually thrives on reverie and musing - mood states within which the subconscious works its best magic. This musing cannot be forced or rushed. But relying upon subconscious incubation will not suffice, in most circumstances, to achieve the most dramatic and significant insights. We must add to our incubation skillful, planned and conscious efforts which might be labelled as "synthesis."

IV. Thinking Your Way into Deep Meaning

Synthesis - which is the thoughtful and conscious act of rearranging, combining, blending, and harmonizing our information chunks, chips, fragments and bytes until we can "make up our minds" and achieve insight - enables us to think our way into deep meaning, supplementing the incubation mentioned earlier.

More on synthesis.

and Synthesis incubation work in concert almost like parallel processors, twin horses pulling a chariot around and through a maze until finally they can finally dash out into the open, achieving some kind of illumination.

Birkerts maintains that wisdom emerges from the resonance . . .

Resonance -- there is no wisdom without it. Resonance is a natural phenomenon, the shadow of import alongside the bidy of fact, and it cannot flourish except in deep time. (Page 75)

V. The Post Modem Skills Array

In an earlier article published in 1994, "Grazing the Net: Raising a Generation of Free Range Students," I listed and defined unusual information problem-solving skills our students would need in order to make meaning in this Brave New World of Information. Those original skills are hyper-linked back to their original definitions. Since writing that article, I have added some new ones which are defined below . . .

Posing essential questions
Identifying subsidiary questions
Opening one's mind
Suggesting and testing hypotheses
Building and testing models
Planning a cyberspace voyage
Learning on the run
Screening and compacting garbage
Sorting and sifting data
Analyzing data
Seeing and finding what's missing
Exploiting serendipity
Navigating in the dark
Navigating in the mud
Scanning from the crow's nest
Changing course

New . . . . . . . . . . . . Incubation

See the passage in this article.

Recognizing anomaly

New . . . . . . . . . Pondering

Is pondering "weighty thought?"

We carry our deepest and most important questions around with us and reflect upon them with the expectation (hope) that we will "make up our minds" and find our way to insight. We must step out of the activities long enough to consider the meaning of what we are finding. Pondering can occur simultaneously with information gathering, but it is more likely to reach its full force during the pauses or "rest stops" which we take between activities.

The human mind, thankfully, can handle multi-tasking quite comfortably, so pondering may be operating in the background even while you are seeking, sorting and sifting information, but the most powerful pondering may happen in the shower, on a long walk or while sitting on a porch.

VI. Way Past Information

Socrates worked in the shadow of the temple, leading his charges down twisting pathways in search of meaning. This search for truth, like much popular music today, was "unplugged." We must equip our young ones with powerful questioning skills if we wish to see them prosper.

Masses of information do not, in themselves, create wisdom. Nor do glittering factoids and MTV thought bytes.

Climbing unskilled onto the Information Highway is without merit. Investing in elaborate school networks without a clear commitment to student centered classrooms and investigations is gambling.

We must take our schools and students way past Information to understanding, wisdom and insight.

Credits: The background is from Jay Boersma.
Other drawings and graphics are by Jamie McKenzie.

Copyright Policy: Materials published in From Now On may be duplicated in hard copy format if unchanged in format and content for educational, non-profit school district use only. All other uses, transmissions and duplications are prohibited unless permission is granted expressly. Showing these pages remotely through frames is not permitted.
FNO is applying for formal copyright registration for articles.

Network 609

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Deep Thinking and Deep Reading in an Age of Info-Glut, Info-Garbage and Info-Tactics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Vol 6|No 6|March|1997 Abstract According to Birkerts ( Gutenberg Elegies, 1994), the search for truth requires deep reading and deep thinking. While the arrival of new electronic information technologies threatens to overwhelm us with info-glut and info-garbage, the post-modem school will raise a generation of highly skilled "free range students" capable of simultaneously grazing the Net and reading deeply.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Critical thinking...the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself.

Critical thinking is a rich concept that has been developing throughout the past 2,500 years. The term "critical thinking" has its roots in the mid-late 20th century. Below, we offer overlapping definitions which together form a substantive and trans-disciplinary conception of critical thinking.

Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987

A statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987.

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking - in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes - is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking.

Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results.

Critical thinking varies according to the motivation underlying it. When grounded in selfish motives, it is often manifested in the skillful manipulation of ideas in service of one's own, or one's groups', vested interest. As such it is typically intellectually flawed, however pragmatically successful it might be. When grounded in fairmindedness and intellectual integrity, it is typically of a higher order intellectually, though subject to the charge of "idealism" by those habituated to its selfish use.

Critical thinking of any kind is never universal in any individual; everyone is subject to episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought. Its quality is therefore typically a matter of degree and dependent on, among other things, the quality and depth of experience in a given domain of thinking or with respect to a particular class of questions. No one is a critical thinker through-and-through, but only to such-and-such a degree, with such-and-such insights and blind spots, subject to such-and-such tendencies towards self-delusion. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions is a life-long endeavor.

Another Brief Conceptualization of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers - concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest. They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living , because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world.

~ Linda Elder, September, 2007

Why Critical Thinking?

The Problem
Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.

A Definition
Critical thinking is that mode of thinking - about any subject, content, or problem - in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and
imposing intellectual standards upon them.

The Result

A well cultivated critical thinker:

raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely;

gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards;

thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and

communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.

Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

(Taken from Richard Paul and Linda Elder, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, Foundation for Critical Thinking Press, 2008)

In a seminal study on critical thinking and education in 1941, Edward Glaser defines critical thinking as follows "The ability to think critically, as conceived in this volume, involves three things: ( 1 ) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences, (2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods. Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. It also generally requires ability to recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems, to gather and marshal pertinent information, to recognize unstated assumptions and values, to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination, to interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments, to recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between propositions, to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations, to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives, to reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience, and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life.

( Edward M. Glaser, An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking, Teacher's College, Columbia University, 1941)

Back to top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Critical thinking...the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself. Critical thinking is a rich concept that has been developing throughout the past 2,500 years. The term "critical thinking" has its roots in the mid-late 20th century. Below, we offer overlapping definitions which together form a substantive and trans-disciplinary conception of critical thinking.