Currently, I am working on a presentation for #FETC2025 on the following image I created (in collaboration with Dr. Katie Martin) regarding AI, Emerging Technologies, and how we embrace timeless learning in a time of accelerated change.
As I was working through the presentation (I do not have AI put it together for me, or else I wouldn’t truly understand what I am presenting!), I wanted to point out a video from a “health expert” that blew my mind. Instead of writing about it, I captured some of the video and images that I will be sharing in my presentation and put together the video below:
As I went through this process, here were two questions that I was considering:
- In a time where information is abundant, how do we teach students (and ourselves) to better question what they read, view, and hear when information to ensure it is factual?
“Critical thinking” is more critical than ever.
I appreciate the following definition of the term from Monash University:“Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyse, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write. The term critical comes from the Greek word kritikos meaning “able to judge or discern”. Good critical thinking is about making reliable judgements based on reliable information.”
This leads to point two.
- I asked the following question from my post last week regarding bias: “Am I learning from a wide range of perspectives through technology, or am I looking to just have what I currently think to be affirmed?”
As I share in the video, we sometimes refer to others being “biased” (myself included) because we disagree with the perspective.Of course, we all have a viewpoint based on knowledge, experiences, and a myriad of other things, but when we use that term, it often says, “Your perspective is wrong” when we say someone is biased.
Sometimes, we agree with information we find, not because it is true, but because we want it to be true. I share the following in the video: “Just because I agree with it, or maybe it is something I want, it doesn’t mean that I should just accept it as an absolute truth.”As I shared at the top of the post, “Curiosity is part skepticism and part wonder.” It is beneficial and healthy to embody both these elements, especially when we want something to be true.
For further context in what I am sharing, I encourage you to watch the video (it is about 5 minutes long). It was a mind-blowing process, and now it has made me more thoughtful of what I am consuming online, even more than I have been in the past.