Critical Thinking

What is Critical thinking?

Critical thinking involves paying close attention to detail,exploring, evaluating and comparing ideas and evidence. It involves asking questions like Why? What if? So What? What is next?

Critical thinking is an essential part of university. Lecturers expect students to critically analyse evidence, write critically and think critically for themselves.Critical thinking goes beyond basic recall of information and involves constructing arguments and creating ideas. There are 3 processes involved with critical thinking these include:

Analysing
Judging
Making decisions

Analysing: This is the first step to critical thinking. It involves examining detail to gain understanding. You must look carefully at information from a variety of different points of view.

Judging: The second stage of critical thinking involves forming ideas and opinions on a subject. It involves evaluation, inference and interpretation. Ever heard of the term "Never judge a book by its cover?" This process is involved in judging, we must read the text, re-read the text, form a judgement and find reasons to support our answer.

Making decisions: This is the final stage of critical thinking. Here you must make a choice and take action based on your understanding. It involves looking beyond the obvious, finding similarities and differences within a text.

What's the difference between prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping?

Prejudice 

Prejudice is usually a hostile or negative attitude towards a distinguishing group of people based solely on their membership in that group.

Discrimination 

Discrimination is the unjustified, negative or harmful action towards a member or a group simply because of his or her membership in that group.

Stereotype 

Stereotyping in the generalisation about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation amongst other members. 

Prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping are three major flaws within society, they segregate individuals based on their nationality, ethnicity, gender, disability, gender preference,religion and even occupation. Why do we feel the need to make others feel different, unwanted and worthless? We are all human, and we are all equal, therefore we should all be respected. I believe people should try and work towards reducing the amount of prejudice thoughts, discriminative acts and stereotyping others and hopefully society will become a safer, more pleasant community for all.

What is SEN?

SEN is when a child has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for them.

For example: Behavioural or social disability
                      Reading and writing
                      Understanding things 
                      Concentration
                      Physical needs or impairment

Children have a learning difficulty if they:
(a) Have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children the same age
(b) Have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities of a kind, generally provided for children of the same school age within the area of the local education authority.

Special educational provision means:
(a) For children of two or over, educational provision which is additional to, or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children of their age in schools maintained by the LEA, other than special schools, in the area
(b) For children under two, educational provision of any kind.

Fundamental Principles to consider with SEN

A child with special educational needs should have their needs met. The special educational needs of children will normally be met in mainstream schools or settings. The views of the child should be  taken into account. Parents have a vital role to play in supporting their child’s education. Children with special educational needs should be offered full access to a broad, balanced and relevant education, including an appropriate curriculum for the foundation stage and the National Curriculum.

With regards to SEN a term known as Inclusion is put in place. Inclusion is the process of identifying, understanding and breaking down barriers to participation and belonging. Here are some words associated with Inclusion:

1. Equality
2. Involvement
3. No discrimination/prejudice/racism
4. Acceptance
5. Conformity
6. Values
7. Human rights
8. Morals
9. Attitudes
10. Freedom
11. Participation

Multiple Intelligence

Dr Howard Gardener founded the multiple intelligence theory that was published in his book 'Frames of Mind' in 1983. Howard Gardener stated the reason for creating the list of intelligences was because it allows us to "make the case for plurality and intellect" (1993). There are two key elements to the theory: (1) Intelligence is NOT fixed and (2) there are many different forms of intelligence. Howard Gardener suggested we have several separate intellectual capacities, each of which deserves to be called and intelligence. The seven intelligences are:
Linguistic
Logical-Mathematical
Spatial
Musical
Bodily-kinaesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal

Linguistic intelligence: The individual expresses themselves through words both written and orally.  They learn best through listening, reading or discussion.  An example of this type of intelligence is a poet or an author.
Logical-mathematical intelligence: Based on reasoning and possess the ability to detect patterns and relationships. People with this intelligence like data which allows them to collect, organise, analyse, interpret, conclude and predict. An example of this type of intelligence is a scientist or mathematician.
Spatial intelligence:The individual can visualise easy, creating mental images and learn best through visual presentation such as pictures, videos, demonstrations and models. Through drawing, painting or sculpting their ideas are portrayed and often represent moods and emotions through art. An example of this type of intelligence is an architect.
Musical intelligence: The individual is sensitive to sound and associated with a well-developed sense of rhythm. They often sing, whistle or hum while participating in an activity.  An example of this type of intelligence is a musician.
Bodily- kinaesthetic intelligence: The individual processes information through the sensations of the body, they enjoy moving around, acting things out and touching people they are conversing with. They enjoy sporting activities of all kinds and can express emotion through dance. An example of this type of intelligence is an athlete.
Interpersonal intelligence: The individual enjoys working in groups, learn while interacting and co-operating with others and also can build and maintain relationships. An example of this type of intelligence is a teacher.
Intrapersonal intelligence:  The individual has an understanding of self, their abilities, beliefs and emotions.  These people are often highly self- motivated. An example of this type of intelligence is a philosopher.

What are the benefits of providing these intelligences?

•        Improvement of self-esteem and attitude towards learning 
•        Help students to recognise and value their strengths and talents
•         Increase motivation to learn 
•        Offers an alternative perspective of intelligence
•        Allows schools the opportunity to redefine intelligence and success 
•         Helps teachers understand and value various talents each individual child

Internet Detective

It is no lie that students use the Internet on a daily basis to help with their college or university work,  majority of the time completely irrelevant information is posted on the Internet daily providing incorrect and miss leading information to students.

Internet detective is a free Internet tutorial that helps students learn to discern the good, the bad and the ugly for online research.The tutorial looks at the critical thinking required when using the Internet for research and offers practical advice on evaluating the quality of web sites.

The tutorial covers 5 aspects:

• What's the Story? – Understanding the advanced Internet skills required for university and college work.
• The Good the Bad and the Ugly – To see why information quality is an issue on the web, especially for academic research. Learn how to avoid time wasting on Internet searching, scams and hoaxes.
• Detective Work – Get hints and tips that help to critically evaluate the information you find on the Internet.
• Get On the Case – Try out your Internet Detective skills with these practical exercises.
• Keep the Right Side of the Law – Be warned about plagiarism, copyright and citation.

University staff strongly disagree with the use of Wikipedia sites as information can be edited by anonymous people and most information is worthless and at best very poor quality. The aim of this tutorial is to provide a guide to aid students in their discovery to find meaningful and appropriate information that can be used in essays, assignments and dissertations.

Animation

Throughout this module I have discovered various ways in which technology can help encourage learning. One aspect I found very interesting was animation. Animation is the creation of images that alter through movement and shape change. Animation is a visual representation of a product that appeals to younger children as it is colourful, engaging and creative. Not only can animation help children express themselves, but it is also a perfect way to allow children the freedom to explore and re-create what they have learnt during lessons (a reflection sort of speak). Here is my animation that I created using 2animate, it is a dustbin baby. 2animate is a perfect app that can be used by children from the age of 6-11, it is also available for specialist schools.

If I was to provide an overview of the application I would say that 2animate is appropriate for children between the ages of 5-10 as it is most suitable for this age range. Its objectives are simple as it has the sole intention of making learning more enjoyable and enabling children to learn through visual means. 2animate is simple to navigate and I believe there is no need for guide lines as it is an app that can be "played about with" to discover how to use the device. There is a need for registration however,  but you can have a free trial before buying the app permanently.

During this module I also experimented with another animation programme called GO animate.com.

OVERVIEW:

Go Animate is an app for creating and publishing animated videos. Go Animate allows individuals to develop narrative videos, where characters speak with lip-sync, the use of props and the moving around of characters on screen. All videos have backgrounds, music and effects.
GO animate is a more advanced form of animation therefore I would recommend its use by older primary school children from 9 years of age and above. It has various background settings and real life cartoons which will appeal more to older children as they have more awareness of these people e.g Obama, Batman and Cupid. GO animate has six objectives these include: Representing diversity, giving contexts to ideas, bend the laws of nature, exploring different ways to create, changing thoughts into visuals and to strike the right tone. GO animate is very simple to access, simply search the hyperlink and it will take you straight to the home page where you will click 'make a video' then the variety of different themes will appear and your animation will be created from there.

http://goanimate.com/

There is a full tutorial guide provided on the website simply just follow the link http://goanimate.com/videomaker/full/tutorial There is a free trial, however to buy this app it is very costly! For example, for the use of one teacher and 30 students it would cost $100 for one academic year. You need to create an account by registering and this is where all of your animations will be saved to, however this is free of charge. It is a simple tool to use BUT it could be seen as complicated for the use of younger children.

Photostory

This is my final draft of my 'say it in seven' video. Christmas is a very special time of year for me as it is the time of year where all of the family come together to celebrate life, happiness and good health. For me, Christmas is a time for forgiveness and to cherish those close to us. I thoroughly enjoy the festivities and the build up to Christmas day! So here are my seven reasons why I love Christmas...