Digital literacy success must include critical thinking lessons: Report
Teaching digital literacy must include critical thinking skills that help students judge a website's veracity, advertising bias and quality of content, according to eSchool News. It suggests a useful mnemonic: RAVEN (a website's Reputation, Ability to see both sides of an issue, ​Vested interest, Expertise and Neutrality). In addition, students should cross-reference information, discern and report hateful or malicious content and be open about online friendships.

Dive Brief:

Teaching digital literacy skills to students must include critical thinking skills that allow students to discern whether information on any given site is trustworthy.

According to eSchool News, schools can teach students to cross-reference information on multiple sites to verify its accuracy, look out for red flags that advertise bias and evaluate the quality of online content.

Students should also learn how to report hateful or malicious content when they come across it and be open with adults about anything they find online or anyone they meet online who makes them nervous or uncomfortable.

Dive Insight:

Education reform advocates have championed the idea of critical thinking skills for years. In classrooms where students are taught to memorize content and take tests, there is little room for critical thinking. Modern standards, including the Common Core, emphasize these skills and their importance to college and career readiness.

While most schools that offer 1:1 device programs incorporate some level of web filtering to keep students from websites that are dangerous or untrustworthy, students should also learn the skills they need to identify such sites on their own. These lessons can be taught at the time of device checkouts at the beginning of the school year and incorporated into guides for students and parents relating to the program.