Students are being exposed to unfiltered information more than ever, and this is causing literacy educators to redouble efforts to help students develop critical thinking and literacy capabilities. You will want to deal with topics such as understanding authors' purposes and credentials as well as building awareness of propaganda, advertising ploys, and similar topics that encourage students to be critical thinkers.

Comprehending and constructing polysymbolic electronic messages as well as the capabilities that new electronic delivery systems have stretched our definition of what it means to be literate today. Electronic features impact students' access to, manipulation of, and use information.

The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA) is an effective strategy for helping students learn to become critical readers who examine evidence, ask questions, make predictions, and reason their way through electronic materials. Assumptions underlying the DRTA include a strong belief that, with proper guidance, students can learn to become independent, critical readers from an early age. Important aspects of the reading-thinking process include helping students: declare their own purposes for interacting with printed or electronic materials, reason as they proceed through such materials, and continuously make judgments during and after interacting with such materials.

Teachers act as "intellectual agitators" as they present DRTAS while students have the roles of examining evidence, making hypotheses and predictions, finding proof to confirm or reject their predictions, suspending judgment as necessary, and making appropriate decisions throughout the reading process.

While the DRTA was originally developed for work with print materials, it is clear that helping students learn to become independent while they work with electronic materials—particularly unfiltered Web materials—is of utmost importance today and in the future. It is already the case that students will encounter abundant amounts of both fiction and non-fiction online materials they will need to deal with on their own.