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30th December 2004

Critical Thinking is key

posted in literacy |
Lots of rhetoric about 21st century skills and problems solving, here are some real tools.

Ian Jukes is the man. On his Christmas 2004 blog entry, he posted a great link to an American School Board Journal Article entitled, “Habits of Thought.” The article provides some great suggestions for teachers on how to help students develop authentic critical thinking skills and problem solving skills.

I went over today and helped an older friend get his new Christmas iPAQ setup with the Microsoft Reader program and an NIV Bible document/program that he had paid $12 online for. Turns out his computer had some missing/corrupted files for Internet Explorer that were preventing the downloading and authentication of both the computer and the iPAQ for the MS Reader program. I ended up also downloading and installing the free pocket e-Sword program for him with 3 different Bible translations, I think it is actually a better program than the one he bought but free….

My related thought here is that critical thinking and problem solving skills are things we all need! We always have, but the need for them seems more apparent than ever to me in our information age. I joke frequently that I really know very little, I am just good at figuring things out off the cuff. This is certainly true when it comes to figuring out technical support problem solutions. Armed with Google and a few other websites I know (like computing.net) I can generally find some suggested solutions to almost any technical computer problem. This is not something I can uniquely do, really anyone could, but it amazes me how so many people reach a point of helplessness when it comes to computer technical problems….

This is not an arrogant observation that I am smart and others are not– far from it. All technology is magic to everyone at some level I think– Arthur C. Clark said that, I have his quote to that effect on my favorite quotations page. I guess it is just interesting to see at what level different people regard technology as magic and not understandable / disciperable / solvable.

It amazes me we are living in an educational era where the prevalent thinking is that an almost exclusive focus on preparation for multiple-choice testing will adequately prepare young minds for the challenges of the 21st Century. What a laugh! Yet that is educational reality in many, many K-12 classrooms across this state and nation today in 2004.. almost 2005.

This evening on the Internet I read a superb article about the BitTorrent technology (“The BitTorrent Effect” from Jan05 Wired) and was just amazed. We are quickly moving to a day when hard drives are incomprehensibly large and bandwidth is incomprehensibly cheap and abundant. What does this mean?

Tangibly, it means this evening on iFilm (referenced in the Wired article) I saw 3 amazing videos taken just days ago of the tsunami which affected millions of people across the globe and killed tens of thousands. And sadly, on the same website, there are lots of “mature” video clips just a click away.

Are we preparing students in our classrooms for this world? To make these choices, which go far beyond technological decisions and straight into the arena of ethics? I don’t think we are preparing them well in many cases.

At least Ian Jukes is sharing some excellent thoughts about how teachers SHOULD be teaching to prepare students for their uncertain and dynamic futures. Now go read the article yourself! :-)

On this day..

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 30th, 2004 at 12:57 am and is filed under literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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