Blogs on Media Literacy

Teleporting, flying cars and Back To The Future style hover-boards. These have all been promised to us within the next few years, but there is little hope of seeing them any time soon. These far-fetched technologies fill us with excitement about what the future may hold, inspiring generations of dreamers to learn math, science and engineering.

The best definition I've heard for poetry is that it's "the extraordinary perception of the ordinary."

Being a kind of art, poetry eludes strict definitions. The very nature of art is to challenge thinking. Trying to define something artistic simply opens up new ground for exploration by those hoping to challenge convention.

Heather Hanson, a first-year teacher on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, knew she was taking a risk when she showed a documentary called "Children of the Plains" to her speech class at Todd County High School. Narrated by Diane Sawyer, the 20/20 episode emphasizes poverty, alcoholism, and family dysfunction on the reservation. "I was offended," says Hanson, who is not Native American, "and it's not even about me. I wasn't sure how my students would react."

The ability to think critically is one skill separating innovators from followers. Critical thinking reduces the power of advertisers, the unscrupulous and the pretentious, and can neutralize the sway of an unsupported argument. This is a skill most students enjoy learning because they see immediately that it gives them more control.