Teens & seniors swap tech skills and life skills

This whole thing started because Sedro-Woolley high school teacher LinseyKitchens saw the people in her life struggle with the Internet. Specifically, she sawthem struggle with what to believe and how to engage their critical thinking skills. Whether that was a teenager in her classroom, convinced that if they bought aprotein powder from their favorite influencer, it would make them stronger andmore popular. Or the senior citizens in her life, who went down rabbit holes ofconspiracy theories online. Or fell for online scams. So Kitchens became obsessed with teaching media literacy to people of all ages.She even won a fellowship at the University of Washington’s Center for anInformed Public where she studied how teachers can incorporate media literacyinto their classrooms. This past spring, she created a day-long event where teens and seniors could spendthe day together, at what you might call a “giant skills swap.” The teenagers gavepresentations about how AI scrapes information from reliable and unreliablesources.While the seniors gave presentations about animal rescue and how to fix aflat tire. But the event almost didn’t happen, because one of those groups was scared toengage with the other group. SoundSide’s Kyle Norris was at the event, called “Ageless Intelligence,” and hasthis story. Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible!Right now, we're asking for listeners to give us a full review of the show. We want to know what you want from the show, so share your thoughts with us at kuow.org/feedback. Also, if you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotesSoundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.