Educational Technology: critical thinking

Showing posts with label critical thinking. Show all posts

Three Good Videos Explaining Critical Thinking for Teachers

November 12, 2014
After posting about the 6 questions every critical thinker should be able to ask, I went ahead and looked into my archive and did a little search on YouTube and compiled this list of good videos explaining what critical thinking is all about and how to go about fostering a critical thinking culture in your class. I am hoping you ll find these resources helpful. Check them out and share with your colleagues.

1- What is critical thinking by QualiaSoup

2- Critical Thinking Explained by Proconord

3-How to think critically and learn anything by PocketVacations

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Interesting Critical Thinking Posters for Your Class

9:34 PM critical thinking

October 2, 2014
Today while I was wading through my Pinterest feeds I came across this excellent resource shared by Teaching Resources. This resource contains some good posters that promote critical thinking. The one like the most is included below , but there also a few other posters relevant for classroom use. You might want to have a look and probably share with your colleagues.

As for the Teaching Resources Pinterest board, this is a board created by Emmy Gilliam and has more than 12.000 followers. Emmy shares some wonderful resources and materials on teaching and education. She has articles from a wide variety of educational blogs and websites. I have spent sometime today going through her pins and I am really impressed by the amazing work she has been doing there.

Here is the critical poster I talked about earlier and you can check the rest from this page. Enjoy

The 12 Characteristics of A Critical Thinker Teachers Should Be Aware of

7:22 PM critical thinking

September 6, 2014
We all want our students to be critical thinkers but when it comes to defining what it is that critical thinking is all about and what strategies to use to cultivate it in classroom things get a little bit muddier.Scholars across various disciplines define it differently. For Daniel Willingham critical thinking is "seeing both sides of an issue", Robert Wessberg views it as " an ability to use reason to move beyond the acquisition of facts to uncover deep meaning" and linda Elder sees it as a "self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way". At its essence, critical thinking does require an elevated form of reasoning that is not usually found in other forms of thinking and for teachers to raise critical thinkers they definitely need to be well versed with the inner workings of this type of thinking. To this end, Edtech and Mlearning has this resourceful section full of materials and resources to help teachers integrate the ethos of critical thinking in their instructional pedagogy.

Image source: http://goo.gl/ML0Xqd

In today's post I am adding another important resource which I have recently uncovered .Critical Thinking.Net is a website that provides some useful materials on critical thinking. Using this website you will be able to find answers to the following questions:

The site also features another page which includes some interesting articles about critical thinking. Going through these resources I came across this definition of what a critical thinker is in the eyes of Robert H. Enis. For Robert a critical thiner:

1. Is open-minded and mindful of alternatives
2. Desires to be, and is, well-informed
3. Judges well the credibility of sources
4. Identifies reasons, assumptions, and conclusions
5. Asks appropriate clarifying questions
6. Judges well the quality of an argument, including its reasons, assumptions, evidence, and their degree of support for the conclusion
7. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position regarding a belief or an action, doing justice to challenges
8. Formulates plausible hypotheses
9. Plans and conducts experiments well
10. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context
11. Draws conclusions when warranted – but with caution
12. Integrates all of the above aspects of critical thinking

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24 Questions to Enhance Students Reflective and Critical Thinking Skills

7:21 PM critical thinking

August 31, 2014
Reflection is a fundamental skill from which is branched out all other thinking skills. Reflection is a form of meta-thinking, a process of deep contemplation and pondering. It is also the basis of critical thinking for we can not raise critical thinkers if we do not have good 'reflectors'. When students are taught the art of reflecting, they become independent learners who are engaged in a constant process of assessment and re-assessment of their learning needs and strategies.

Reflection is all about questioning. To cultivate a reflective culture within your class, students need to be encouraged to pose challenging questions as to the way they learn and think. They need to be able to track the inner thinking process that lead them to the answers they come up with. There are a variety of questions to use with students in this regard. Some of these questions are captured in this beautiful visual below. Teachheath, who created this visual, divided these questions into 4 main headings: accuracy questions, understanding questions, clarity questions, and giving clarity questions. Go through the visual and explore the different questions featured there. This is indeed a great back-to-school resource to add to your teaching toolkit. Enjoy

Source of the graphic: http://goo.gl/72q0vH

Tons of Resources for Teaching Critical Thinking to Your Students

8:28 PM critical thinking

August 28, 2014
Somebody asked me today about resources for teaching critical thinking to students.The first thing that comes to my mind is Cybraryman's wonderful platform where he collects and shares educational websites and links.His Critical Thinking page features a wide variety of resources on problem-based learning and critical thinking. You might want to bookmark his page and keep checking on it as it is a work in progress and he keeps adding more stuff to it. Some of the things you will find in this page are video resources on critical thinking, guides and tutorials, rubrics, iPad apps for teaching critical thinking and many more.

A Great Guide to Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills eBook

5:33 PM critical thinking

July 9, 2014
Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills is a free PDF eBook from Microsoft for teachers and educators.This short 37 pages ebook provides a wide range of ideas for teaching web search skills and critical thinking in all grades (k-12). It also features different resources to introduce teachers to the concept of critical thinking and provides them with practical guides on how they can go about incorporating critical thinking skill in their instruction.

I came across this wonderful eBook through a resourceful list containing more than 300 free eBooks provided by Microsoft. This eBook as well all the other eBooks featured in that list are free to download. You don't need to sign up or register to download them.

Here is a quick look into the table of content of Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills: