Among the most powerful resources educators can give students are tools for analyzing and evaluating information disseminated by today’s media. Critical thinking skills, the means to disassemble and carefully inspect ideas, will serve learners long after they’ve left the classroom behind. Pupils need to be able to think. They need to be savvy media consumers, discerning individuals who are more than ready and able to intercept and counteract spin, doublespeak, and other cunning manipulations of information. Students must acquire and hone the ability to filter obfuscations. Teachers can facilitate this by using technology to explore and refine media literacy.

For example, two episodes of PBS's investigative news show Frontline illustrate the importance of understanding how media affects society. Concerned educators would do well to watch:

• The Merchants of Cool
  
• as well as The Persuaders.

Both programs are available online and underscore the unsettling manner in which media giants bombard consumers with subtle and not-so-subtle messages. Make no mistake–any number of organizations seek to influence the way in which the general public conceptualizes given ideas. Author Malcolm Gladwell (see the Tipping Point) investigates ideas relating to the acceptance and amplification of social practices that were introduced in The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders.