Thinkalong

"Helping learners make sense of the 21st century media environment" is the mission statement of free educational service Thinkalong. This resource allows students to practice thinking critically about current topics that directly affect their lives and communities through its interactive and engaging format. Every day young people encounter a virtual flood of misinformation, manipulated data, and opinions presented as facts on the internet. As a result, students must learn to question their sources and apply critical thinking skills to determine if they can trust the media they are reading online. The "about us" page mentions a study from the Stanford University History Education Group who found that "80% of middle school students could not differentiate sponsored content from a news article, and 40% of high school students could not differentiate legitimate and dubious sources."

Thinkalong does not require a login or registration and is completely free for all users. When visiting for the first time, users will find a scrolling homepage with a large list of "hot topics" and current news issues presented as questions to the user. Once students enter a specific learning module they will find content categorized into three main areas: investigate, contemplate, and debate. Each one of these areas offers students multimedia content, articles, and questions with open-ended response areas for feedback and text. Educators and school library media specialists will discover a large selection of 45 to 60-minute learning modules that lead students through a systematic lesson where they exercise skills including investigating an article, thinking deeper about the content, and also debating a current event or issue. The learning modules include topics such as STEM, civil rights, sports, government, civics, Black Lives Matter, the 2020 election, human rights, and more. The modules are relevant and current to what our students are reading and hearing about in the news, and all modules also include the media literacy framework from the Center for Media Literacy.

School library media specialists focusing on media literacy lessons could have middle or high school students sign up for topics that seem interesting and then have them work independently or in small groups through the three areas within a given time frame. The culminating activity could be the debate portion, which would allow students to demonstrate their learning and thinking processes based on the Thinkalong learning modules. A whole class discussion would also allow for students to hear different viewpoints and learn about various resources and their credibility and reliability.

Thinkalong is an overall fantastic and highly recommended resource for middle school and high school students thanks to its ease of use, high quality information, and sharp focus on media literacy skills.

[Editor's Note: For additional information on Thinkalong be sure to watch SLC editor Jacquelyn Whiting's behind-the-scenes conversation with the development team: Behind the Scenes at Thinkalong: Helping Students Build Media Literacy]