2021 #VWEDU: #DTA: Can you teach critical thinking online? The detective story model.

Can you teach critical thinking online? 

The detective story model.

Critical thinking is not something you teach about. It is something people learn by practice.  Online offers opportunities for practice.

• Watch on YouTube
• Starring Hedge as the Digital Teaching Assistant (DTA)
• Think like a coder series
• Computational thinking is really concrete planning.
• So teaching computational thinking also teaches planning.
• Learning to think like a coder calls for problem-solving.
• So courses in coding are also teaching problem-solving.

The story model

• Digital literacy. He did it in Classcraft. Like a detective story. Could you do it better in your favorite virtual world? Are your students the heroes who will solve this problem?
• Death for dessert: Another workshop model: Detective, compact
• Digital Literacy: Cyberbullying, the Learner Bureau of Investigation (LBI), and Sargent Guru: A strawman plan
• The pecan pie murder. A 3D story in first draft for the writer's workshop
• Era of the entrepreneurial educator. The unbundling of education opens the gate for entrepreneurs.
• Practice critical thinking (search)
• Scholarly articles for practice critical thinking

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Learn critical thinking 

• Teach critical thinking (search)
• Once you hear lecture about swimming, you never forget what you learned about lectures. Talking is not teaching.
• Center for creative leadership 
• What do we mean by critical thinking?
• Terms mentioned: rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, 
• or evaluation of factual evidence

Resources for critical thinking

• Logic puzzles (search)
• Logic puzzle (Wikipedia)
• Carmen Sandiego

Logic puzzle (example) 

 Three travellers were aboard a train that had just emerged from a tunnel, leaving a smudge of soot on the forehead of each. While they were laughing at each other, and before they could look into a mirror, a neighbouring passenger suggested that although no one of the three knew whether he himself was smudged, there was a way of finding out without using a mirror. He suggested: “Each of the three of you look at the other two; if you see at least one whose forehead is smudged, raise your hand.” Each raised his hand at once. “Now,” said the neighbour, “as soon as one of you knows for sure whether his own forehead is smudged or not, he should drop his hand, but not before.” After a moment or two, one of the men dropped his hand with a smile of satisfaction, saying: “I know.” How did that man know that his forehead was smudged? Logic puzzle

Take-away questions

• Should students be learning critical thinking?
• Should a teacher model critical thinking?
• How would students practice critical thinking?
• Hint: Reading about critical thinking is practice in reading.
• Hint: Listening to a lecture about critical thinking is practice in listening.

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Visit me on the web

• Drop by my web offices Weekdays: 12:-12:30 pm Central time (US)
• I am available for free consulting on any topic in this blog.
• Cybalounge and 3DWebWorldz (Orientation room)
• I will be in both places, so you may need to speak to get my attention.
• Web-worlds, 3D virtual worlds running in a browser. Summary
• And we can visit the Writer's Workshop on the Web
• Don't register -- enter as guest.  

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