The importance of teaching media literacy skills | Assiata Ayinla | TEDxDixwell

Transcriber: Rim Al Alami Reviewer: Intan Andini Hello. So I was around eight years old when I started watching ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ this classic cartoon about a character named Aang trying to end a war waged by the Fire Nation and restore peace taught me many lessons about life. Later on, I started to write stories, and while doing so, I had to ask myself what ideas I wanted to portray to people, what messages I wanted to send and how I wanted to, to reveal them.

This made me realize that the stories I’ve read and watched have impacted me in the same ways I want to impact others, to share my ideas and beliefs with people through the plots and characters I create. Now, when I watch Avatar and other shows, I pay attention to the little details, the details that express the ideas of the creators directly and indirectly, the nuances of the show and the thoughtfulness that went into it have made me rethink how I watch shows and consume media in general. Most times we watch shows and use media for entertainment, but whether or not we are aware of this, the contents we consume are influencing us.

The ideas we view can become our beliefs and we can easily accept them sometimes without our own analysis. to stop this from occurring, we must actively, critically think about the ideas we encounter in the media and in real life. The need for critical thinking is particularly important due to the increased access to information we have as a result of technology, especially when in one study, 82% of middle school students could not differentiate between real and sponsored news stories.

Another study found that most high school students did not care to verify the sources of online photos. Even college students showed a lack of critical thinking. Out of those tested, more than 80% could not recognize biased media from independent news sources supported by groups as less reliable than a mainstream news source.

So what is critical thinking? The foundation for critical thinking has a very long definition right there on the screen. But to sum it up, critical thinking is basically how you understand and analyze information you encounter to form your own conclusions.

There are six central skills to critical thinking. These are interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. Interpretation is basically how you understand and describe information you encounter.

Analysis refers to finding the connection between different pieces of information and what they are meant to or do convey. Evaluation is the act of judging how credible someone and the information they present is. Inference is the act of using information to reason and come up with your own rational conclusions.

The last two skills to critical thinking are very important. These skills involve being able to reflect on our beliefs and change them. Without these skills, our beliefs can remain stagnant even as we receive new information, counteracting or even furthering them.

Explanation refers to being able to describe your conclusions and how you deduce them from the information you have encountered. Self-regulation is being able to observe your beliefs and change or correct them. By applying these skills to everything we encounter in our everyday lives, we will be better able to understand our own beliefs and notice when we're being influenced.

Not all ideas are good, nor are all ideas harmful or dangerous, but some can be. And regardless of whether we actually accept these ideas, we should question them. Everything we hear, everything we read and everything we see should be questioned.

What does this idea or statement actually saying? Or what ideas is this image or video portraying? How do the ideas relate?

Who or what is showing me these ideas? Are they credible? What do I think about their ideas as a whole?

Should I accept them and should I spread them? These are some of the many questions we can use to apply critical thinking to everything we encounter in the media and in real life. Thank you.