EP218 Ten tips for teaching critical thinking + information literacy (w/ LaGarde & Hudgins)

Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers

Want to develop your students into digital detectives? Join me as I talk with Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins, who are co-authors of the book Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking In the Age of Fake News, and also a new book coming out in July 2021 called Developing Digital Detectives.

This is the second episode in our 2 part series about media literacy. Episode 216 with Peter Adams of the News Literacy Project shares how educators can be informed media consumers and advocates for truth. This is an important first step, because we can’t teach skills to students if we don’t have those skills ourselves.

In this episode, we’re doing a deeper exploration into how to support students in information literacy. Jennifer, Darren, and I will talk a bit about big picture issues, like making time for instruction on digital literacy, and how to teach kids to think critically about conspiracy theories when those conspiracy theories are widely believed among the community you teach in.

But we’ll spend the vast majority of our time talking about specific, practical things you can do with your students right now to help them be smart media consumers:

1. Teach thematically and help kids make connections between topics/subjects
2. Use mobile devices — not just computers — when having kids analyze information
3. Create learning environments that value questioning, not just finding the right answer
4. Guide students to understand their brains and examine bias/assumptions
5. Move from a checklist approach to an investigative approach for fact-checking
6. Teach kids to be specific about the falsehood rather than claiming "fake news"
7. Illuminate the people behind the information that's shared
8. Help kids analyze information not only in long-form articles, but also in the mediums they frequently consume, such as video, memes, and social media images
9. Teach kids HOW to think, not WHAT to think
10. Remember that information literacy is a human problem, and even small steps to tackle it are worthwhile

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