First pedagogical event

Friday night was an amazing night of using our wits and observing educational technology tools in action!

We were attending Sheila's pedagogical event. Unfortunately, we weren't quite sure how it was gong to work. We knew Sheila would be using VoiceThread but at 10 pm, I was in our Wimba room. Thinking I was late or missed the entire event, I frantically started to text Theresa who was the only one on MSN. At 10:15 pm Theresa signed on to Wimba and after a brief chat, she signed off due to technical difficulties. I asked her where Stacey and Sheila were and she began messaging them. Meanwhile, Theresa and I continued to text when Stacey appeared. I had noticed she had already posted comments on Voicethread, and intermittently, Theresa was chatting with me and posting on the Voicethread as was I. But we weren't sure where Sheila was. Then we started a Skype call and while Stacey, Theresa and I were chatting synchronously, Stacey noticed Sheila was on the USQ course so she sent her a text message! Eventually we all ended up on Skype's group call which lasted for two hours! It was as if we were in the same room, at the same time and yet we were half way across the world, in different time zones, different countries, collaborating. What a wonderful feeling.


Comments on the pedagogical event: I was so pleased to have had to watch Slumdog Millionaire and to analyse it based on questions Sheila raised based on DeBono's Six Thinking Hats. Sheila was introducing us to critical thinking skills based on DeBono's thinking system. I've always said I am not a deep thinker and it's been of interest to read literature reviews about critical thinking.
Ayse Kok (2008) wrote that "learning in a world where traditional assessments of intelligence are radically changing and abundant knowledge is more radily available due to the proliferation of ICTs has become a challenge."

Simple definitions:

...basically being able to distinguish the true from the false and is in no short supply (vanGelder, 2001)
...unique kind of purposeful thinking in which the thinker systematically and habitually imposes criteria and standards upon the thinking...(Bogdan, 2000)
...recognizes differing viewpoints, being analytically reflective and willing to increase sources of information as well as generating meaningful questions to formulate plausible conclusions (Jones et al, 2005; Paul, Elder, Bartell, 1997; Perry, 1999, Ennis, 2002; Lampert, 2005)

It encourages me to know that according to vanGelder (2001) 'critical thinking skills can be improved with practice under the following conditions

• motivated: the student should be motivated to improve critical thinking skills
• guided: the student should be informed what to do next
• scaffolded: structures should be provided to prevent inappropriate activity especially during the early stages
• graduated: the complexity of the tasks should gradually increase
• feedback: students should receive feedb ack about the appropriateness of their activities.'
  

I've often wondered why students don't transfer lessons learned in one class and apply them in another. According to van Gelder (2001, Skills acquired in one domain or context may not transfer and in order to do so, students must extensively practice transferring their skills over other contexts (Kok, 2008).

Using the VoiceThread posed some technical problems. Although Sheila asked us if we had used it and advised us to watch the 1 minute video, I was not prepared for some of the technical difficulties. It was an amazing process to see how our group overcame these difficulties. At one time we were in VoiceThread, Wimba, MSN and Skype! And to think I was happy when one of my students was on ANGEL chat with a student who was at sick and at home ! I must practise using the online classroom and uploading to the desktop for next year.

References:
Kok, A. (November 2008). Developing Discipline-Based Critical Thinking Skills Via Use of Interactive Technologies, http://www.itdl.org/Journal?Nov_08/article01.htm