Elizabeth Hartnell-Young Asks Students To Have Critical Thinking to Block Hoax

The recent literacy involves digital literacy, information literacy, multiliteration, and 21st century skills that demand capturing, producing and creating skills that involve digital processes, information media and literacy skills so that the assessment process is based on data. This was stated by Dr. Elizabeth Hartnell-Young from The University of Melbourne, Australia as a guest speaker at the Department of Electronics and Informatics Engineering Education (10/29/2019). She continued that understanding new literacy can not be separated from old literacy which in essence can not be separated from the three pillars of literacy: reading, writing, and archiving. If it is related to literacy, there must be a clear formula and all of this can not be separated from the role of educational institutions, especially higher education.

Dr. Elizabeth continued that recent literacy marked by the rise of various social media, website pages, blogs, games and animation. "In fact, Indonesia is one of the biggest users of social media in the world." she said.

"Even in Asia Pacific, Indonesia is in the third place of the largest smartphone users so that it causes the amout of smartphones are bigger than Indonesian population", she continued.

"Besides that, Indonesia is also the 4th largerst Facebook users in the world and tens of millions Instagram users also come from Indonesia." she added.

This can be potential if it is managed and utilized well, on the other hand it can also have a negative impact if it is not accompanied with high spirit of literacy," she said.

One of the bad effects is that hoaxes or fake news are easily spread among people and this can cause unrest. Therefore the ability of critical thinking is certainly needed to analyze information objectively so that it can provide an appropriate judgement.
"Besides critical thinking, other skills needed in the 21st century include communication skills, problem solving, collaboration, ICT skills and creativity," conclude Dr. Elizabeth. (Winarti)