Critical thinking – a mental compass

 

       

Let' s break the ice with a question: Which is the capital of Australia –

Sydney   or  Melbourne?

In a room plenty of students, no one answered correctly: Canberra.

What did the students learn from this? Once, which is the capital of Australia and then how the manipulation is constructed. We give them two false options and their mind assumes that they have to choose between them. That's exactly how manipulation works: it gives you a fake frame and lets you believe you're choosing freely. Critical thinking is the power to ask: Is there a third option?

How do we develop critical thinking in the age of AI? The question is often heard nowadays – because it's about us and the world we live in, about the era in which Artificial Intelligence does almost anything: it writes texts, makes illustrations, composes music, generates codes, corrects mistakes, answers history questions... What is left for people?

The answer would be: critical thinking, that is, that ability that helps us understand, choose, decide and not be manipulated – neither by algorithms, nor by information, nor by fashion.

Critical thinking is like a mental compass – it helps you not to get lost in the chaos of information. Through the seminars and workshops of the Erasmus+ project The Invisible Face of Media, students and teachers from different parts of the world had the opportunity to make steps, small but well-guided ones, in the invisible side of the internet.

The seminar hosted in Sibiu by Visma Company during the mobility in Romania was one of the main activities of the project.  A few students shared their experiences, how they felt when they realized they were being tricked, how they did afterwards, what they do differently now. What can we do – teachers, students, users – not to lose our discernment in a world full of data? It was emphasized through a variety of examples of videos, photos and clickbites of articles from social media not to react automatically when we have to make important decisions or read messages on social networks, but to think before deciding something or giving "share". This way there were defined the biases that distance us from fact-checking.

Artificial Intelligence has no depth, no emotionality, no empathy, only structure. This is the first step of critical thinking: to recognize the difference between information and understanding, not to reject everything, but to ask questions.

The students also received a tip - to apply the rule of six questions whenever they are faced with messages that seem dubious: who, what, when, where, why and how? Artificial Intelligence is fast, but critical thinking is courageous because questioning what you are told or what you see on social media is still a human feature.

Thus, through the participation in this project the students developed their critical thimking skills in the field of media. They discovered that critical thinking is not just about saying I don't think, but about saying I want to understand, that it's just like a mental workshop: you check your hypotheses, adjust your tools and, in the end, you get a solid result. Thinking critically means not being afraid to ask, looking for explanations, not accepting answers such as "that's how it's done and that's it." It's about the courage to think for yourself.

Teacher: Alina Dragoe, Technological Highschool ”Nicolae Teclu”  Copșa Mică, Romania