The TedTalk that Kelsey shared entitled ‘The Importance of Teaching Digital Literacy Skills‘ had some great points for not only educators but parents to ponder and think about. She defines “Critical Thinking: The intellectual disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, and applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to believe and action.” She shared the 6 Central Skills of Critical Thinking which incorporates: Interpretation, Analysis, Evaluation, Inference, Explanation and Self-Regulation. If we break this down more we can see what each entails and its importance to us as we are educating our youth about digital literacy and how to think critically and not just believe everything that they see or hear.

Interpretation: How you understand and explain what information you encounter

Analysis: Finding the connection or relationship between different pieces of information and what they are meant to or what they do convey

Evaluation: The act of judging how credible someone and the information they present is.

Inference: Using information to reason and come up with your own rational conclusions.

The last two skills are very important as they involve us being able to reflect on our own beliefs and having the ability to change them. Without our beliefs can remain stagnant which does not allow for an individual to move forward.

Explanation: Being able to explain your conclusions and how you deduced them from the information you have encountered

Self-Regulation: Being able to observe your beliefs and change/or correct your views.

When we apply these to all areas of our lives we are able to see when we are being influenced and our beliefs are being tested. Not all ideas are good, nor harmful and negative. We need to have the skills to be able to know the difference. It is through questioning all the things that we see, read and hear that we can come up with our own conclusions. We can determine for ourselves if they align with our beliefs or not. She finished off with a list of questions for us to ask ourselves as we are taking part and looking at different areas of our lives.

I found myself looking back at things that I have read, seen and heard and went through the 6 Central Skills for Critical Thinking. It helped me to re-think some of my own beliefs and how I need to be more open to taking a critical look at them and see if the information that I have is reliable or if I am just falling prey to the age old story of believing what you see and hear.

I know that these are skills that I am going to teach my own children and will share with my staff. The more that we are able to educate our youth and prepare them to transition from Elementary school to High School to Post Secondary or Work. The better that we will be.