iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Many students are not good at evaluating the credibility of what they see and read online according to a now-famous Stanford study that was released just after the 2016 election. And while it’s true that 82 percent of middle schoolers couldn’t tell the difference between a native advertisement and a news article, neither could 59 percent of adults in a study conducted by the advertising industry.

Sam Wineburg, the Stanford professor who led the middle school study, is worried that everyone is “profoundly confused” right now and that schools aren’t doing enough to teach students the skills they need to be effective citizens and digital consumers.

“We blame our kids for not knowing the difference between ads and news stories, but the kinds of skills we are talking about are not widely taught in schools,” Wineburg said on KQED’s Forum program while discussing his new book Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone). “So we can’t blame young people for not knowing things they haven’t been taught.”

The Australian Curriculum acknowledges that developing thinking skills is a primary purpose of education, and identifies critical thinking as an important capability for the 21st century. Critical thinking has, of course, long been a valuable skill for young people to master, though its importance is expected to increase
as the world becomes ever more augmented
by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Despite consensus on the need for critical thinking, there is still considerable debate over how it is learned and, subsequently, how education can best support students to develop critical thinking capabilities. Some believe that critical thinking can be taught as a generic skill independently from subject content, while others contend that content mastery is pivotal
to the development of thinking capabilities.
This paper considers what cognitive science can tell us about how critical thinking is acquired, and the implications for how education might best develop young people’s critical thinking capabilities in light of this evidence.

By: Steven Floyd Many parents, teachers, administrators and policy makers all around the world are exploring the potential of having young children

Over the past year, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies have ramped up efforts to purge their platforms of accounts spreading fake news, conspiracy theories and other untruths across the internet. But the democratization of the media and the expansion of social media in recent years is placing an increasing burden on us, the consumers of this avalanche of news and information, to do a better job of discerning fact from fiction.

Are we up to the challenge? And how well will our children do at confronting an even more challenging media landscape in the years to come? The early returns are not promising, at least when it comes to how well most of us do at engaging in critical thinking on a regular basis — and asking our children to do the same — including in the critical area of seeking out viewpoints opposed to our own. According to the findings from a new survey of more than 1,100 adults by the Reboot Foundation, an organization committed to examining the state of critical thinking:

Everybody needs a hobby, so it’s said. But even if you’re busy enough as it is (and what teacher and student isn’t), you can still benefit from exploring this list of creative hobbies for building critical thinking skills. Some of them you may already be doing. If not, consider starting out with one that interests you. Learn about it as much as possible before you dive in—creative hobbies can grow to be more than just a hobby if they resonate with you.

Few would challenge the value of helping students develop critical thinking and information literacy. But if such skills are encouraged simply as a reactionary means to challenge knowledge, says danah boyd, the future may look even more chaotic and grim.

Speaking at the morning keynote on the third day of SXSW EDU, boyd, a researcher at Microsoft and the founder and president of Data & Society, offered this provocative observation: “Many of the forms of critical thinking that we’ve introduced into American education are backfiring right now.”

Touching on matters ranging from Russian propaganda efforts to Netflix, history to philosophy, boyd’s intellectually provocative talk raised plenty of deep questions around media and manipulation. But she also admitted there are few clear solutions.

Use of social media platforms like twitter, facebook, and instagram can walk a fine line, teetering back and forth between connectivity and narcissism.

More immediately for educators, it illuminates our need to create empathetic learning experiences that connect learners for deeply human purposes. The greater the dysfunction, the greater the need to belong.

So then, let’s take a look at 10 ways we can help children–students, in this case–use social media critically. Critical thinking begins with the self and extends out. Rather than fight things like ‘screen time,’ maybe we can help them use that time in more constructive ways grounded in critical thinking.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc (Google’s parent company), is optimistic about the future. “We’re entering what I call the age of abundance,” he says. “And during the age of abundance, we’re going to see a new age … the age of intelligence.

“By 2020, most human beings will have access to the internet. When you have everyone harnessed with this information, the world gets more inter-connected. It gets stronger. There’s more knowledge sharing. There’s more freedom and there’s more openness.”

In an era when students must sort through increasingly complex social and political issues, absorbing news and information from an evolving digital landscape, social studies should be meaningful and engaging—a means for preparing students for the modern world, writes Paul Franz for EdSurge. Yet much of our social studies curricula emphasizes content knowledge over the development of foundational, critical thinking skills such as understanding the context in which primary sources were created, and determining the credibility of resources.

Below, you will see a breakdown of the 4 C’s. These infographics are located in Google Slides and they are yours to take for free. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m all about “teachers give teachers”, so steal away. All I hope is that this can help educators provide a greater depth of learning in their lessons to students. It’s cheesy – but that’s worth a lot more than money.

Computational thinking is one of the biggest buzzwords in education—it’s even been called the ‘5th C’ of 21st century skills. While it got its start as a way to help computer scientists think more logically about data analysis, lately it’s been catching on with instructors in a diverse number of subjects—from science to math to social studies.

One reason for its emerging popularity? It’s engaging.

“Ask yourself, would you rather get to play with a data set or would you rather listen to the teacher tell you about the data set?” asks Tom Hammond, an associate professor for the teacher education program at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania. “Most are more interested in getting hands-on, even if it's just looking at the map and saying, ‘What about this?’”

Hammond is a social studies teacher by training with a natural interest in computer science, a subject he’s also taught. Now he’s championing a new approach to his subject that combines computational thinking with data visualization tools, like geographic information systems, or GIS, which pair maps with layers of data—so that users can see, say, election results by county or state borders in the colonial era.

While it’s true that critical thinking is a foundation rather than a brick, how you build that foundation depends on the learning process itself: exposing students to new thinking and promoting interaction with that thinking in a gradual release of responsibility approach.

The following graphic from learningcommons is most useful for its universal applicability via its simplicity–six basic questions that characterize critical thinking.

The questions are general enough that they can be used with almost anything–different age groups, content areas, and various learning contexts.

Whether you’re exploring math theories with a high school classroom, astronomical phenomena in a university, or a picture book in the elementary classroom, the questions can be used with few changes to promote critical thinking.

The solution is education. Specifically, it’s about giving people the power of critical thinking. If you’re a better thinker, you’re a better judge of information, and that’s how we will finally beat fake news.

 Currently, most young people aren’t able to easily separate online fact from online fiction. Students have difficulty ascertaining the difference between real news stories and branded advertising. They also don’t take the bias of source material into account when evaluating claims on social media, according to a 2016 study by the Stanford History Education Group. One survey found more than one-third of children admit to sharing information online that they later learned was fake or inaccurate.

 The lack of critical thinking is dangerous for many reasons, perhaps the most important of which is the inability of voters to discern legitimate information from nonsense. Good electoral decisions depend on voters casting ballots based on actual conditions in their communities, not myths and bogeymen, and in this sense, fake news and its gossipy cousins will make democracies far weaker.

 But there’s more than that: Fake news impairs the response to everything from natural disasters to terror attacks. For instance, during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, rumors spread on Twitter that officials were asking victims seeking shelter about their immigration status.

 This is why critical thinking is the cornerstone of the response to the “fake news” problem. After all, a key component of critical thinking is the ability to question assumptions. This is doubly important when every factoid in human history is, in theory, just a Google search away, but it’s all mixed in with a lot of incorrect or biased information.

In a complex world overrun with information, there’s one skill above all that the next generation will need: the capacity to engage in critical thinking.

Today was the first day of school. Words can’t describe how great it felt to be back in the classroom; a combination of joy, satisfaction, wonder, and excitement for the year that lies ahead. Summer was great – being away from routine enabled time for relaxation and reflection but being with students today was an inspiring reminder of the purpose of our work as educators.

I presented at a conference over the summer (CEMC) where I talked about how I frame the school year. One question that I often get about the thinking classroom framework is how to fit in curricular outcomes. It seems easy to engage kids with awesome problems, puzzles, and games but teachers say they have to go back and “teach the curriculum”.

My quick answer to that question is that I set the stage for thinking during the first two weeks of school by doing my best activities (not related to one specific curricular outcome). These are my top shelf activities that are super engaging. During these two weeks, kids get used to thinking, they build relationships through collaboration, and they build confidence and autonomy by having their ideas heard and valued. After this phase, I start to bring in tasks that are more related to specific curricular outcomes and since the stage is already set, the kids approach those problems with the same level of engagement and deep thinking.

Few would challenge the value of helping students develop critical thinking and information literacy. But if such skills are encouraged simply as a reactionary means to challenge knowledge, says danah boyd, the future may look even more chaotic and grim.

Speaking at the morning keynote on the third day of SXSW EDU, boyd, a researcher at Microsoft and the founder and president of Data & Society, offered this provocative observation: “Many of the forms of critical thinking that we’ve introduced into American education are backfiring right now.”

Touching on matters ranging from Russian propaganda efforts to Netflix, history to philosophy, boyd’s intellectually provocative talk raised plenty of deep questions around media and manipulation. But she also admitted there are few clear solutions.

Gone are the days where children were expected to memorize facts and recite them at any given time. Instead, it is hoped that children will develop critical thinking skills so that they can analyze situations, think about different outcomes, and present well-reasoned conclusions. To help children develop critical thinking skills, there are some apps, tools, and resources. Here is a list of the top seven.

Critical thinking isn’t a skill, nor is it content knowledge or even evidence of understanding. While it involves and requires these ideas, critical thinking is also very much a state of mind — a willingness and tendency to sit with an idea and ‘struggle wonderfully’ with it.

In critical thinking, there is no conclusion; it is constant interaction with changing circumstances and new knowledge that allows for broader vision which allows for new evidence which starts the process over again. Critical thinking has at its core raw emotion and tone. Intent.

The purpose of this product is to help students practice this slippery ‘skill.’ By having dozens of questions written generally enough to be widely applicable, but with an inherent rigor that challenges students to think, the ability to practice thinking critically is always available.

We talk to many educators in our travels. Everywhere we go, we ask what they feel are the most important skills for modern learners. Teachers, school leaders, and educators of all kinds have many shared goals. No matter where they hail from, one of the most common among them is effectively developing critical thinking skills.
Thinking critically is the pinnacle of the accumulation of knowledge and experience. How can we start developing our learners’ critical thinking skills rather than teaching to the test? What strategies will bring out the critical thinkers inside all our learners?