Developing a critical thinking mindset prepares you to present your own ideas in a variety of information situations. You may want to present your ideas at work, school, in your community, or online. As part of your presentation, you will want to make a unique contribution that reflects your original thinking about a topic that is also accurate and informed by your research. This will require you to apply critical thinking to your topic, whether you are researching a familiar concept or just starting to explore a new subject of interest. Sometimes you may know exactly what you are looking for based on a defined issue or concern. For instance, you may need to look up something based on a particular interest or to solve a problem. This will require background research on a topic to expand your knowledge before you share with others. Critical thinking prepares you to consistently ask good questions about the information you accessed through multiple sources, including those you encountered instantly through the digital devices that make information access relatively easy.

At other times, you may not even be sure what you are looking for because you are not familiar with a topic at all, or you may be at the very early stages of your research process. To get started on a topic when you don’t know where to begin, you may also need to consult an expert, either directly or through their writings. Your habit of thinking critically will help you to identify such an expert. Sometimes you may want to start with Wikipedia as a first step in the process just to review an overview of key themes or topics and to assess possible resources to explore further. Critical thinking goes beyond verifying sources, authority, accuracy, and authenticity. You also need to analyze information for bias, including the author's and your own, while evaluating the degree to which the information is true or false.

Critical thinking is vital to the information we create and share. The ideas that we present in any format must also demonstrate critical thinking through careful analysis and evaluation, as well as original thought and insights. The development of original ideas may take place individually or in collaboration with others and takes many forms, such as text, image, sound, and multimedia, and are easily created and distributed online. The presentation of ideas must be informed by careful research and articulated in a clear and accurate manner.

When creating and sharing your own ideas and assertions you will want to ask similar critical questions about the accuracy and authenticity of the information. This requires reflection on how the content will be understood by potential audiences. In addition, critical thinking is a reliable check on the information accessed and shared. For instance, before sharing a post or tweet found online, how do you know that the information is truthful and from a reliable source? What kinds of critical questions do you ask before sharing information? What kind of research do you conduct to dig deeper and verify that information?

It is important to acknowledge that sharing information online carries with it the same responsibilities as original authorship. If you distribute false information through social media, it still reflects poorly on you. Sharing untruthful information just to be provocative is the same as telling the original falsehood. Critical thinking includes an ethical dimension that reinforces the importance of good judgment in both creating and sharing content in all information environments.

When producing and sharing information through the presentation of ideas, you should always reflect on the following questions:

• Is the information factually accurate?

• Is the information from a reliable source?

• Is the information entirely original or based on other ideas that I have accessed from other sources?

• Does the information presented reflect my opinion based on how I feel about a topic or an informed perspective or insight that is based on research?

• Did I give credit to other sources referred to in collaborative work?

• Did I make an effective and accurate presentation of ideas based on the information I researched and analyzed?

By continuously reflecting on these questions, you will develop an effective critical thinking process that will allow you to filter reliable information from unreliable information. You will also expand your ability to develop and support your ideas to construct an effective presentation for external audiences in text or media formats.

Once you have identified a topic to present on and conducted research to support your presentation idea or theme, you will need to think through how you will present these ideas to an external audience and what form of technology you will use to communicate your research. You will practice this process in the following activity.

Create a presentation that explains a time from your own life when you taught someone an important life lesson or gained similar insights from someone who taught you something meaningful. As you work on your presentation, think (cognitive) about what you learned or taught and how you feel (affective) about this memory. Reflect (metacognitive) on what it means to you in terms of the knowledge gained. Then, turn this story into action (behavioral) by creating a presentation in one of the following formats.

• Write a one-paragraph description of your reflection in a text document.

• Create an infographic that presents your ideas visually (e.g. with Cool Infographics).

• Develop a slide presentation that explains how your strategy leads to effective presentations (e.g. with Google Slides).

• Create an interactive digital image that illustrates your ideas (e.g. with Genial.ly). with a single visual document.

• If you have a blog, write a blog post that explores your reflection about life lessons.

• Produce a digital story that allows you to go into greater detail about this memory