What is critical thinking?

I think that critical thinking means looking beyond the surface of issues and not just accepcting everything you hear but questioning that information and trying to find its real meaning.

The expert definition of critical thinking I found was from criticalthinking.org. They devote their entire website to talking about critical thinking so I feel that its a pretty legit site. They defined it as "Critical thinking is that mode of thinking - about any subject, content, or problem - in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and
imposing intellectual standards upon them".
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766
They don't really say that there is a particular process that one should engage in to think critically they just talk about how one should stop and examine their life and the things around them and think beyond the usual.

I think the connection between critical thinking and IM 204 is that we will be asked to use critical thinking during the class. Just from the first day of class it seems like we will researching topics we are prejudice against or know little about. Then we will have to think critically about that information to change or not change our ideas about that culture or group of people. If we don't use our critical thinking skills and keep an open mind we will not be able to learn as the professor would like us to.