[critical and digital literacy]

via Thinking 2.0:

"Helping students take control of their own learning is one of the most important challenges facing teachers. The (inquiry or constructivist) approach is based on providing students with opportunities to formulate their own research and create “artifacts” or “products” that demonstrate their understanding and skill development. However, it often becomes glaringly obvious that “research” to many students involves taking the information from the first couple of web sites that appear from a google search, cobbling it together and “voila” - there it is. This is a long way from the goal of students as knowledge “producers”. Teaching students how to evaluate the reliability of information remains one of the most important literacy skills.
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site is useful to show just how easily students can be manipulated by a professional “looking” web site.

AfterEd Video(Teachers’ College, Columbia University) discusses the importance of providing students with “educated guidance on how to use new media” and helps debunk the assumption that buying lots of computer hardware will meet students’ 21st century literacy needs.
Some key “critical literacy” questions it advocates include:How was this text contructed?What are its underlying values?What are the conventions it uses?Who is the intended audience?Who owns and who benefits from this?

Video via: Multiliteracies

This Department of Education Tasmania site also has activities and work samples "