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How's Your Bullshit Detector? | The Smirking Chimp - 2 views

smirkingchimp.com/8863
shared by David McGavock on 22 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • the phrase, "crap-detecting," originated with Ernest Hemingway who when asked if there were one quality needed, above all others, to be a good writer, replied, "Yes, a built-in, shock-proof, crap detector."
  • As I see it, the best things schools can do for kids is to help them learn how to distinguish useful talk from bullshit
  • There are so many varieties of bullshit I couldn't hope to mention but a few, and elaborate on even fewer. I will, therefore, select those varieties that have some transcendent significance.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Pomposity:
  • plenty of people who are daily victimized by pomposity in that they are made to feel less worthy than they have a right to feel by people who use fancy titles, words, phrases, and sentences to obscure their own insufficiencies.
  • Fanaticism:
  • The essence of fanaticism is that it has almost no tolerance for any data that do not confirm its own point of view.
  • Inanity:
  • The press and air waves are filled with the featured and prime-time statements from people who are in no position to render informed judgments on what they are talking about and yet render them with elan and, above all, sincerity. Inanity, then, is ignorance presented in the cloak of sincerity.
  • Superstition:
  • Superstition is ignorance presented in the cloak of authority. A superstition is a belief, usually expressed in authoritative terms for which there is no factual or scientific basis.
  • you can't identify bullshit the way you identify phonemes. That is why I have called crap-detecting an art. Although subjects like semantics, rhetoric, or logic seem to provide techniques for crap-detecting, we are not dealing here, for the most part, with a technical problem.
  • if you want to teach the art of crap-detecting, you must help students become aware of their values.
  • So any teacher who is interested in crap-detecting must acknowledge that one man's bullshit is another man's catechism. Students should be taught to learn how to recognize bullshit, including their own.
  • Postman's Third Law: "At any given time, the chief source of bullshit with which you have to contend is yourself."
  • The reason for this is explained in Postman's Fourth Law, which is; "Almost nothing is about what you think it is about--including you."
  • An idealist usually cannot acknowledge his own bullshit, because it is in the nature of his "ism" that he must pretend it does not exist. In fact, I should say that anyone who is devoted to an "ism"--Fascism, Communism, Capital-ism--probably has a seriously defective crap-detector
  • Sensitivity to the phony uses of language requires, to some extent, knowledge of how to ask questions, how to validate answers, and certainly, how to assess meanings.
  • You, therefore, probably assume that I know something about now to achieve this. Well, I don't. At least not very much. I know that our present curricula do not even touch on the matter. Neither do our present methods of training teachers. I am not even sure that classrooms and schools can be reformed enough so that critical and lively people can be nurtured there. Nonetheless, I persist in believing that it is not beyond your profession to invent ways to educate youth along these lines. (Because) there is no more precious environment than our language environment. And even if you know you will be dead soon, that's worth protecting.
  • David McGavock on 22 Dec 11
     
    ""Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" by Neil Postman (Delivered at the National Convention for the Teachers of English [NCTE], November 28, 1969, Washington, D.C.)"
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The demise of quality content on the web - 4 views

www.elezea.com/...the-demise-of-quality-content thinking evaluate information_literacy critical_thinking ads lowest common denominator
shared by David McGavock on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • I remember exactly when I decided to stop reading Mashable.
  • You can’t see a single word from the actual article without scrolling. It reminded me of a comment that Merlin Mann recently made in his typically funny and obnoxious style:
  • we seem to be in this bizarre race to the intellectual bottom to write the most generic article in the world so that everyone with an Internet connection will click through. And the only purpose seems to be to keep the advertising monster fed, fat, and happy.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • I’m worried that all the noise makes it increasingly difficult for quality content[1] to be seen. Worse, I’m worried that it’s discouraging the creation of quality content because what’s successful (i.e. what gets the most clicks) is mostly lowest-common-denominator blog post titles that either start with a number or end with a question mark.
  • The problem is not that people don’t have enough time, it’s that people don’t have enough attention.
  • The wells of attention are being drilled to depletion by linkbait headlines, ad-infested pages, “jumps” and random pagination, and content that is engineered to be “consumed” in 1 minute or less of quick scanning – just enough time to capture those almighty eyeballs[2]. And the reality is that “Alternative Attention sources” simply don’t exist.
  • David McGavock on 30 Dec 11
     
    "I used to believe that if you write with passion and clarity about a topic you know well (or want to know more about), you will find and build an audience. I believed that maybe, if you're smart about it, you could find a way for some part of that audience to pay you money to sustain whatever obsession drove you to self-publishing (and to do it without selling your soul in the process). "
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There Is No Digital Divide - Technology Review - 1 views

www.technologyreview.com/...there-is-no-digital-divide digital divide technology Jessica Daniels rheingold
shared by David McGavock on 05 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • I think we've all sort of accepted the "digital divide" framework, but there are some real problems with that.  First of all, saying there is a "digital divide" presumes a shared understanding of that term and there's not one.
  • Given that in the original research, the middle- and upper-classes, whites, and men were more likelyt to have access to technology, those sorts of questions about the characteristics of the "have-nots" just point us to old ways of thinking about class, about race, and about gender."
  • My research finds that Black/Latina/o LGBT youth who are homeless - in other words, the very people who should be on the "other side" of so-called the "digital divide," are in fact, quite adept at technology and most have smart phones. They use this technology to survive - to find work, social services, avoid police or report police misconduct.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Instead of "digital divide," other scholars have talked about "digital fluency," or even "digital entitlements" which I like better.
  • I found that while they were very adept at some things (opening multiple browser windows, locating things online quickly), they weren't very good at some other, important tasks. For example, they weren't good at deciphering "cloaked" sites from legitimate ones. 
  • I'd point to the work of my friend Howard Rheingold and his new book "Net Smart," which is an excellent guide for how to be a digitally fluent user of all the technologies we have available to us now.  It's an excellent book and I think the FCC should include it in their plan for training the digital educators going into schools!
  • David McGavock on 05 Jun 12
     
    a recent New York Times piece, "Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era" (or, as Gawker put it, "Poor People Are Wasting Time on the Internet!") asserts that while all kids are spending more time with media, those with lower socio-economic status were spending even more of it, and on activities like Facebook that aren't exactly conducive to learning. In other words: even when you give poor people access to technology, they don't know what to do with it! Might as well give a paleolithic tribe access to a chip fab, pffft. Jessie Daniels, Associate Professor of urban public health at Hunter College and CUNY and author of a forthcoming book on Internet propaganda, tweeted her displeasure at the piece. (There's even a Storify of all her comments on it.)
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The 7 Bad Habits of Ineffective Job Seekers - Regional Help Wanted - Job search and job... - 0 views

enewsletters.biospace.com/...of-ineffective-job-seekers.htm
shared by Bill Bell on 19 Oct 10 - No Cached
    • Bill Bell
      Bill Bell on 19 Oct 10
       
      Clearly you cannot waste all of your time.
    • Bill Bell
      Bill Bell on 19 Oct 10
       
      I would also say that it's quite possible to land a job that is very unsuitable because employers themselves are often poor at screening candidates.
    • Bill Bell
      Bill Bell on 19 Oct 10
       
      This may be less important in Canada where there are fewer job boards. For a way of finding a much wider array of job boards and job postings using Google see my blog.
  • ...1 more annotation...
    • Bill Bell
      Bill Bell on 19 Oct 10
       
      I have heard that LI now houses the biggest collection of jobs on the 'net. Are you a member?
    • Bill Bell
      Bill Bell on 19 Oct 10
       
      You can build up a reputation or 'brand' on LI by participating in groups and answering questions.
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The Critical Thinking Co. - What is Critical Thinking? - 1 views

www.criticalthinking.com/articles.html crap detection critical_thinking information thinking critical
shared by David McGavock on 31 May 10 - Cached
  • 1. Is open-minded and mindful of alternatives 2. Tries to be well-informed 3. Judges well the credibility of sources 4. Identifies conclusions, reasons, and assumptions 5. Judges well the quality of an argument, including the acceptability of its reasons, assumptions, and evidence 6. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position 7. Asks appropriate clarifying questions 8. Formulates plausible hypotheses; plans experiments well 9. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context 10. Draws conclusions when warranted, but with caution 11. Integrates all items in this list when deciding what to believe or do
  • David McGavock on 31 May 10
     
    "A SUPER-STREAMLINED CONCEPTION OF CRITICAL THINKING Robert H. Ennis, 6/20/02"
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Critical Reading - 1 views

aix1.uottawa.ca/...critical.html
shared by David McGavock on 03 Jan 11 - Cached
  • Critical reading means thinking carefully about an author’s claims, rather than accepting these claims at face value. It requires several skills: ·        identifying the claims or arguments of a text; ·        evaluating the logic of these arguments; ·        determining whether the author has presented sufficient and valid evidence in support of these arguments; and ·        considering alternative evidence and arguments that might challenge the author’s claims. Why bother?  Because if you don’t read critically, you may miss the main arguments of the text, or – worse – your opinions may be influenced by bogus arguments.
  • 1.       Claims:  What are the main claims or arguments in the text?  What is the author’s main point? 2.      Logic:  How does the author reach these conclusions?  What are the steps in the author’s reasoning or logic?  Is this logic sound? 3.      Evidence:  What evidence does the author present to support the argument(s)?  Does the author offer enough evidence?  Is this evidence convincing?  Can you think of any counter-evidence that would challenge the author’s claims? 4.      Assumptions:  Does the author rely on hidden assumptions?  If so, are these assumptions correct? 5.      alternative arguments:  Can you think of alternative arguments that the author has not considered?
  • David McGavock on 03 Jan 11
     
    "Critical reading means thinking carefully about an author's claims, rather than accepting these claims at face value. It requires several skills: · identifying the claims or arguments of a text; · evaluating the logic of these arguments; · determining whether the author has presented sufficient and valid evidence in support of these arguments; and · considering alternative evidence and arguments that might challenge the author's claims. Why bother? Because if you don't read critically, you may miss the main arguments of the text, or - worse - your opinions may be influenced by bogus arguments."
  • David McGavock on 03 Jan 11
     
    When you are reading for understanding, here are some questions to ask. They will help you weigh the arguments and check for validity.
  • David McGavock on 03 Jan 11
     
    How does this apply to Internet searches? We are looking for authority. What are the practices we should adopt to navigate the network world?
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John Seely Brown & Cognitive Apprenticeship - 1 views

www.lifecircles-inc.com/...Brown.html cognition psychology thinking apprenticeship coach
shared by David McGavock on 03 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Brown's work on cognitive apprenticeship evolved from the work of Lave on situated learning.
  • Learners enter a culture of practice. Acquisition, development and application of cognitive tools in a learning domain is based on activity in learning and knowledge. Enculturation (social interaction) and context (learning environment) are powerful components of learning in this model.
  • In traditional classroom approaches, the teacher's thinking processes are usually invisible and operate outside of conscious awareness, even for the teacher. The goal of cognitive apprenticeship is to make the thinking processes of a learning activity visible to both the students and the teacher.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The legitimacy of prior learning and knowledge of new students is respected, and is drawn upon as scaffolding in tasks which initially seem unfamiliar or difficult to learners.
  • Cognitive apprenticeship can be especially effective when teaching complex, cognitive skills such as reading comprehension, essay writing, and mathematical problem solving.
  • David McGavock on 03 Apr 11
     
    Theories of Learning in Educational Psychology John Seely Brown: Cognitive Apprenticeship
  • David McGavock on 03 Apr 11
     
    An approach to teaching that leads with active questioning.
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Users for Sale: Has Digital Illiteracy Turned Us Into Social Commodities? - 1 views

mashable.com/...users-products-rushkoff information_literacy evaluate critical_thinking digitalliteracy programmed markets
shared by David McGavock on 09 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • “The dot com boom failed because people didn’t want to buy shit online. They were just talking to each other,” said Douglas Rushkoff in a recent keynote speech at the WebVisions conference in Portland. “Content was never king. Contact was always king.”
  • We spoke to Rushkoff about the current state of web culture and his crusade to encourage programming literacy.
  • You argue that users are not the true customers of social networks like Facebook. What are the ramifications of this?
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • We understand that the job of the person working in the Gap is to sell us clothes.“Usually, the people paying are the customers. So on Facebook, the people paying are marketers.”But we don’t apply this same very basic logic to online spaces. The easiest way to figure out who the customer is in an online space is to figure out who is paying for the thing. Usually, the people paying are the customers.
  • We are more likely to use our Facebook profile as a mirror, chalking up its deficiencies to the technology itself. We don’t consider that the ways in which Facebook screws with the way we see ourselves is its function, rather than some random artifact of social networking.
  • s this different from TV networks selling commercials against popular shows that they deliver over the airwaves for free?
  • But imagine what it would be like if you didn’t know that the evening news was funded primarily by Big Pharma. You would actually believe the stuff that they’re saying. You might even think those are the stories that matter.
  • When (if ever) are these free technologies worth trading a bit of privacy for?
  • The only thing standing between you and total surveillance is the fact that they don’t yet have the processing capability to mine their data effectively.
  • In answer to your question, engaging with people costs us privacy. It always has. I think the only way to behave is as if nothing is private. And then fight to make what you care about legal and acceptable.
  • You warn against the dangers of “selling our friends” by connecting our social graphs to various networks and apps. How does this damage our relationships, even if we’re doing it unwittingly?
  • Unwittingly, well, it’s more like when your friends keep inviting you to FarmVille or LinkedIn. When they unwittingly turn over their address book to one of these companies that’s really just in the business of swelling their subscriptions so that they can go have an IPO.
  • You advocate “programming literacy” in the online platforms we use every day. How much can the average web user be expected to understand?
  • I don’t think the average web users of this century will achieve basic programming literacy.
  • If they don’t know how to make the programs, then I’d at least want them to know what the programs they are using are for. It makes it so much more purposeful. You get much more predictable results using the right technologies for the right jobs.
  • I want people to be able to ask themselves, “What does this website want me to do? Who owns it? What is it for?”
  • You note how our traditional social contracts (e.g. I can steal anything I want, but I won’t do it out of shame, fear, etc.) break down due to the anonymity and distance of the web. How can we change this and still maintain an open online culture?
  • We have an economic operating system based in scarcity — that’s how we create markets — so we don’t have a great way yet of sharing abundant resources.
  • It’s a problem of imagination, not reality. We have imaginary boundaries.
  • rather than getting people to use the web responsibly and intelligently, it may be easier to build networks that treat the humans more responsibly and intelligently. Those of us who do build stuff, those of us who are responsible for how these technologies are deployed, we have the opportunity and obligation to build technologies that are intrinsically liberating — programs that reveal their intentions, and that submit to the intentions of their users.
  • David McGavock on 09 Jul 11
     
    We've finally figured out how to monetize social interaction, and Rushkoff, an award-winning author and media theorist who writes and speaks regularly on these topics, has reservations.
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Visible Thinking - 12 views

www.old-pz.gse.harvard.edu/...VisibleThinking1.html metacognition reflection_activities thinking_games critical_thinking Questioning
shared by Julie Shy on 12 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Julie Shy on 12 Jun 13
     
    Visible Thinking includes a number of ways of making students' thinking visible to themselves, to their peers, and to the teacher, so they get more engaged by it and come to manage it better for learning and other purposes. When thinking is visible in classrooms, students are in a position to be more metacognitive, to think about their thinking. When thinking is visible, it becomes clear that school is not about memorizing content but exploring ideas. Teachers benefit when they can see students' thinking because misconceptions, prior knowledge, reasoning ability, and degrees of understanding are more likely to be uncovered. Teachers can then address these challenges and extend students' thinking by starting from where they are.
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Educational Leadership:Creativity Now!:The Case for Curiosity - 2 views

www.ascd.org/...The-Case-for-Curiosity.aspx Questioning inquir_based_learning critical_thinking
shared by Julie Shy on 29 May 13 - No Cached
  • Julie Shy on 29 May 13
     
    But what we admire and what we deliberately cultivate aren't the same. When researchers dig deeper, they find that many adults think of curiosity as a trait possessed by some but not others. Or they think that as long as the environment isn't too repressive, children's natural sense of inquiry will surface (Engel, 2011). In fact, when Hilary and I asked teachers to list which qualities were most important without giving them a list to choose from, almost none mentioned curiosity. Many teachers endorse curiosity when they're asked about it, but it isn't uppermost on their minds-or shaping their teaching plans.
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