Week two has been a week of revisiting a couple of learning experiences from different parts of my life. From the Six Thinking Hats that I last saw 14 years ago in STEPS through to the Wiki experience in Multimedia at university. It has been both interesting and informative.
Learning Theories
As the Wiki consisted of a number of people working together in a collaborative experience it was a great example of Social Constructivism. Social Constructivism requires other people to help in the learning process; where both the teacher and other participants help to reinforce the information being learned. The Wiki's text-based discussion with other students who may have different ideas about the subject, helped to guide each individual. As with any online collaboration there was also some evidence of Connectivism as we each went online to find information about the deBono hats along with finding out about phones in schools. Additionally, yet another aspect of Connectivism emerged, as I found that when I searched for appropriate images to back up my perspectives, I gained more information about the subject from others who have used these images in similar blogs and websites.
deBono's Thinking Hats and Scaffolding
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| Source: Katrina Johnston |
Now I have to admit that when I last experienced the Six thinking hats I was the student and didn't appreciate the scaffolding nature of the hats. Honestly, I thought they were just a bunch of silly psychobabble. However, upon doing this exercise and discussing it with another student with a better grasp of the psychology of the hats, I am starting to see the uses of this as an educational tool.
The use of deBono's Six Thinking Hats gave structure to the Wiki and helped to scaffold the experience. It also helped to encourage higher-order thinking. Higher-order thinking can be broken into three categories: transfer, critical thinking, and problem solving (Curriculum Leadership Journal 2014). Transfer requires the student to both remember and make sense of what they have learned. Critical thinking means that students will apply wise judgement and problem solving encourages them to work out the desired goal (Curriculum Leadership Journal 2014). Blooms Taxonomy is a framework that helps to teach thinking, the cognitive domain within Blooms Taxonomy deals with higher-order thinking. There are Six Major categories that are listed in the cognitive domain; knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These were subsequently adapted to verbs and rearranged to become: creating, evaluating, analysing, applying, understanding and remembering (Curriculum Leadership Journal 2014). Each of these six categories can be seen in the use of deBono's Six Thinking Hats. The white hat (facts) is based on the knowledge category while the red hat (feelings) is the evaluation taxonomy. Both black (judgment)and yellow (benefits) use the analysis and evaluation categories with the green hat (creativity) showing synthesis. Finally we come to the blue hat (thinking) which follows Blooms comprehension and application.
I found that the Hats helped to consolidate my thoughts on what aspects I should consider when I was thinking about the mobile phone issue. The Thinking Hats tool is a good technique for looking at the effects of a decision from a number of different points of view, it encourages creativity and allows the user to come up with new decisions while also helping them to put aside the pessimism or scepticism they feel about a certain subject (Mind Tools 2015). In being able to stop and look at the mobile phone debate from a number of perspectives I found that I went from “No they are distracting” in the judgment phase through to “Yes, the apps and connectivity would be great” in the yellow section. The scaffolding provided was extremely effective and could be used in a number of ways. with a mathematics class the hats could be used when facing an assignment that deals with a real life scenario. The hats could be used to make the students look at the issue from a number of perspectives and then to come up with problems (black), benefits (yellow), new ways around the problem (green), how they feel about the particular problem ( red) and to explain how they got their answer and what they did (blue) (deBono For Schools 2006). Similarly in an ICT class the Six Thinking Hats could be used in a scenario where the students have to create a website. They could utilise each of the thinking hats to analyse what information they need for the site, who the audience would be and what ideas they could come up with to create a different site.
The video below explains the thinking hats in more detail:
Wiki and Collaboration
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| Source: Google Images |
I found the activity of using the Wiki instructive. Reading what the other students had written helped me to form my ideas . However, as each person seemed to be saying the same thing it became tempting to just skip over the other participants information and add mine to the bottom. I also found that sometimes it didn’t feel so much like a group working together but more like each person just adding information one after the other. I also found that missing the final step of considering the information and summarizing the conclusions left the process feeling unfinished.
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| Source: Otrazhenie. (2015) |
As an educational tool it would be a good way to get a number of people working collaboratively, however there would need to be one person in charge constantly monitoring the page as anyone can change, edit and otherwise mess up the information in a wiki, and once the information is lost it would be difficult to backtrack to the point it was lost without additionally losing everything that was done after that point. Also, it would only take one person, deciding that their thoughts were better and rewording other people’s thoughts, to create bitterness and tension. The other negative with a text based forum like this is that a lot of face-to-face idiosyncrasies and mannerisms that help to smooth conversation are lost.
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| Source: deBono's Hats Wiki (2015). |
The actual design of the Wiki was frustrating at times as changing colour and text wasn’t as smooth or easy as it could be, also things tended to move around as you pasted them in and the line spacing and line endings changed in strange ways. One other hick-up I had was the addition of images as the link to upload images didn't seem to be working. In order to put an image in I had to either upload them to a different website and then import them from there or find the link to each image online and use that.
Of course there are other sources for online collaboration, Skype is a popular video collaboration tool that has been used in both business and education, while Dropbox is helpful for group work that needs to combine files and other resources. Another online tool that is handy for people wanting to work on a document at the same time is Google Docs. In both Mathematics and ICT a Wiki could be used to get students collaborating. Within a maths class, a real-life problem could again be given to a group of students to see how they could work together to apply equations to sort it out in a wiki while ICT could use a wiki to co-ordinate efforts to create a website or maybe a graphics project, giving each student a task but requiring that they document in the wiki as they do their parts so that the group as a whole can see how the project is progressing at any time.
Thus ends my reflection on thinking, hats, theories and collaboration. It has been informative and educational. I have seen how Social Constructivism and Connectivism both have a place in the online collaborative environment while discovering the benefits of scaffolding that I hadn't appreciated as a student. Additionally I have encountered both positive and negative aspects of an online collaborative experience in Wiki and how they could be used in my teaching areas. From this experience I can definitively state that Albert was correct when he said:
Thus ends my reflection on thinking, hats, theories and collaboration. It has been informative and educational. I have seen how Social Constructivism and Connectivism both have a place in the online collaborative environment while discovering the benefits of scaffolding that I hadn't appreciated as a student. Additionally I have encountered both positive and negative aspects of an online collaborative experience in Wiki and how they could be used in my teaching areas. From this experience I can definitively state that Albert was correct when he said:
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” Albert Einstein (Brainy Quote 2015)
Regards Katrina Johnston
PS. I mentioned the thinking hats to my 15 yr
old daughter and her friend and they both went "Yuk!" "Yeah we've had them at school, but we just ignore
them. They're stupid." Now considering my initial thoughts from years
ago about psychobabble I can understand where the kids are coming from, they seem pointless if they are not explained correctly.
So one thing I think must be considered when using a tool like this,
is to make sure the students understand why they are using it and how it
will help them. This is a great scaffolding tool to help them think outside the box and focus on different perspectives. The girls didn't really understand why they were using the hats analogy and as such just
ignored what should be a great tool for teachers to use.
PSS. Just to add a bit of fun and contrary information, I thought I would pop in an example of unhelpful thinking habits:
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| Source: Sicinski, A. (n.d.) |
Reference List
Brainy Quote. (2015). Albert Einstein Quotes. Retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins148778.html
Curriculum Leadership Journal. (2014) Skills for the 21st Century: Teaching Higher-Order thinking. Retrieved from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/leader/teaching_higher_order_thinking,37431.html?issueID=12910
Curriculum Leadership Journal. (2014) Skills for the 21st Century: Teaching Higher-Order thinking. Retrieved from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/leader/teaching_higher_order_thinking,37431.html?issueID=12910
deBono For Schools. (2006). Six Thinking Hats. Retrieved from http://www.debonoforschools.com/asp/ss_put_on_six_hats.asp
deBono's Hats Wiki (2015). Group 1 - deBono's Hats. Retrieved from http://debonoshats.wikispaces.com/Group+1
Mind Tools. (2015) Six Thinking Hats. Retrieved from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm
Otrazhenie. (2015) Unity is Strengthwith a Good Giggle. Retrieved from https://otrazhenie.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/unity-is-strength-with-a-good-giggle/
Ward, J. (2011) Online Collaboratie Writing: how Blogs and Wikis are Changing the Academic Publishing Process. Retrieved from http://www.masternewmedia.org/online-collaborative-writing-how-blogs-and-wikis-are-changing-the-academic-publishing-process/
Sicinski, A. (n.d.) Unhelpful Thinking Styles. Retrieved from http://www.mindmapart.com/unhelpful-thinking-styles-mind-map-adam-sicinski/
Engagement Activity 5 - Pedagogy Needs to be FUN!
When dealing with children and teenagers pedagogy needs to be fun! If the pedagogy isn’t fun they will turn it off and blank out what is being taught. Everything else in a good pedagogy really relates back to this one factor. So let’s have FUN!!!
I have come up with my own list of things I believe are necessary for a good pedagogy:
I think good pedagogy focuses on the student, how he or she learns, and to a large degree, what interests them. Good pedagogy should relate to their lives with real-life scenarios that help them to understand the world around them and how the subject relates to it. A lot of people don’t see how most of the higher level Mathematics learned in senior secondary will help them in everyday life. If they aren’t wanting to go on to become engineers or something with a technical theme they aren’t interested in learning it. That is where good pedagogy comes in by placing it in a real life context. Also getting students to solve equations in a group so that they can discuss the implications of what they are working on. And even getting them to come up with places and ways that the equations could be used outside a textbook.
The following video is the 8 principles of fun. Now while I don’t think we should be encouraging high school student to break the rules, I do think that some of these can be incorporated into a good pedagogy to make for an interesting and fun learning experience.
For those who don’t have the time to go through the video I have listed the principles of fun below:
1. Stop hiding who you really are 2. Start being intensely selfish 3. Stop following the rules 4. Start scaring yourself 5. Stop taking it all so damn seriously 6. Start getting rid of the crap 7. Stop being busy 8. Start something (Write in Color 2013) Below are some highlights from the study guide that I found important to remember:
There are some clear pedagogical principles that should inform our teaching, they are identified as:
1. Facilitating deep knowledge through higher order thinking 2. Facilitating collaborative learning in which conversations are important 3. Supporting students in knowing how they learn best 4. Planning learning that is problem-based, and situated in real life contexts 5. Is relevant to students, and connects to their background knowledge 6. Supports learning that is owned, controlled and managed by students themselves 7. Is socially supportive, engaging, and values cultural knowledges 8. Is supportive of the development of active citizenship, and strong group identity. Learning should be authentic, it should be embedded in a real context. It should be connected to the world beyond the boundaries of the learning context. Learning should be problematic, in real life, learning is always messy and ill-defined. Learning should be collaborative and support substantive conversation amongst learners, and it should value difference and group identity. Finally, learning should support deep knowledge, higher order thinking. These principles are all the same - authentic context, problem-based learning, deep understanding and higher order thinking, collaboration for learning, and the creative and inventive solution to the problem that addresses the real-world problem posed.
How I see these principles:
Blooms Taxonomy encourages higher-order thinking with the Cognitive Domain’s six categories:
or the Revised domain of:
Where as the SAMR Model has four categories:
Redefinition - Technology allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable
Modification - Technology allows for significant task redesign Augmentation - Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with functional improvement Substitution - Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with no functional change
Where possible the redefinition Model would be best to really engage the students and get the most out of the available technology and ICTs.
“Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. Informal learning is like riding a bike: the rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route.” Jay Cross (Good Reads 2015)
Regards Katrina Johnston
Reference List
Big dog and Little Dog's Performance Juxtaposition. (2015). Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#cognitive
Classroom Connections. (2015). The SAMR model: engage in deep learning and authentic contexts. Retrieved from https://classroomconnections.eq.edu.au/topics/pages/2013/issue-7/samr-learning-technologies.aspx
Good Reads. (2015). Informal Learning Quotes. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1026947-informal-learning-rediscovering-the-natural-pathways-that-inspire-innov
Write in Color. (2013). The Eight Irresistable Principles of Fun. Retrieved from http://www.writeincolor.com/2011/05/03/the-eight-irresistible-principles-of-fun/
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