'Lost' & critical thinking

What has quickly become a cult TV show, ABC's "Lost," is a great tool for teaching media literacy. Take a Lost-related site a Washington Post article leads with, Oceanic-Air.com, and compare it with, say, Quantas.com.au or Lufthansa.com. Then surf through the other Lost links the Post provides, and make a list of ways you can tell which sites are what they say they are and which are bogus, and how you (or your kids or students) can tell which have accurate information and which have content worth some skepticism. Net-mom has a really useful page of links for critical-thinking development: "Who Says? Developing Web Literacy Skills." And if something tells you you've been fed a line on the Web or in email, there are sites that expose online hoaxes, such as Hoaxbusters.org, VMyths.com, and the one by US government's Office of Cybersecurity. [See this item about some research on critical thinking done at Wellesley College in 2003.]