The Critical Thinking About Sources Cookbook

Students deal with complex online environments every day, and many are being asked to grapple with—and produce—new types of information and to utilize and navigate unfamiliar information environments. Critical thinking skills can empower students to become savvy consumers, producers, and distributors of information and can equip them to navigate and participate in complex twenty-first-century information ecosystems.

The Critical Thinking about Sources Cookbook provides lesson plans, resources, ideas, and inspiration to empower librarians in helping students develop the crucial critical thinking and information and media literacy skills they need. 96 recipes divided into two parts—Consuming Information and Producing and Distributing Information—explore evaluating information, recognizing scholarly sources, how technology mediates our experiences with information, the economics of information ecosystems, and more, including provocative considerations of issues like copyright and open access and deep dives into pop culture and social media.

Critically examining many of the challenges inherent in our media ecosystems, The Critical Thinking about Sources Cookbook takes a broad look at the types of sources our students are expected to use and produce, and provides librarians and educators with a series of adaptable and innovative approaches to teaching critical-thinking skills.