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"Critical thinking is a skill that we can teach to our students through exercise and practice. It is particularly a skill that contains a plethora of other skills inside it. Critical thinking in its basic definition refers"  to a diverse range of intellectual skills and activities concerned with evaluating information as well as evaluating our thought in a disciplined way ". All of our students think in a way or another but the question  is , do they really think critically ? are they able to evaluate the information they come across ? are they capable of going beyond the surface thinking layer ? Can they make connections between what they learn and the outer world? Can they question the status quo of their knowledge ?"

So what is Computational Thinking? Well it is a collection of diverse skills to do with problem solving that result from studying the nature of computation. It includes some obviously important skills that most subjects help develop, like creativity, ability to explain and team work. It also consists of some very specific problem solving skills such as the ability to think logically, algorithmically and recursively. Computer Science is unique in the way it brings all these diverse skills together.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

SCAMPER is a strategy that can be used to assist students to generate new or alternative ideas. It is a tool to support creative, divergent thinking. SCAMPER is an acronym for: substitute, combine, adapt, modify/magnify/minify, put to other uses, eliminate, reverse/rearrange. What is its purpose? SCAMPER is a thinking tool that helps students to ask questions about a concept, text, or idea that require them to think beyond the obvious. It can help develop critical thinking skills and creativity and is a useful cooperative learning tool and a great stimulus for role play. In this post from Litemind, Lucciano " ....... presents a complete SCAMPER primer, along with two free creativity-boosting resources: a downloadable reference mind map and an online tool that generates random questions to get you out of a rut whenever you need." In this very comprehensive post Luciano note only explains the terminology associated with SCAMPER but also lists suggested questions as well as "Trigger Words".

"Chart created by Andrew Churches in which he relates higher order thinking skills included in Blooms Taxonomy to different digital skills. The purpose is to highlight the importance of technology and digital skills in today's learning."

From the Educational Technology & Mobile Learning blog "Enokson has created for us a kind of road map containing all the major critical thinking skills we need to know about. He put these skills into an image that you can download from Flicker. Here his image has been turned it into an infographic-like embeddable HTML code to use on your website or blog. Check the code below if you want to embed it on your blog but please if you are to use this link anywhere else online make sure to pay credit to Enokson.

Links to the apps used in the activities published an eBook titled Hot Apps 4 HOTS: A Guide to Using Free Apps to Support Higher Order Thinking Skills by Lisa Johnson and Yolanda Barker. The book includes nine step-by-step activities that focus on each level of Bloom's taxonomy and includes loads of links to further resources.

Designed to assist teachers to help their students, Microsoft offers this a free 37 page ebook entitled Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills. The ebook presents strategies for teaching Internet search skills and strategies for evaluating information. The ebook also links to many additional resources for teaching web search strategies. There are strategies and resources appropriate for students from in early elementary grades through high school included in the ebook. AOf course it has many references to Bing and other Microsoft products, but overall it is a good resource.

reducing our aims just to types of skills risks boring everyone to death with short lived, tool specific training which doesn't address the social and political context of people's lives or their reasons for engaging with technology.

"Great literature is essential to learning in any classroom, but in a 21st Century learning environment, texts become a centerpiece for classroom discussion, critical thinking and deeper understanding. And as you adapt to the new school year (and the new Common Core standards), the literature in your classroom can become an essential component to your students' success"

"Creative and Critical Thinking Skills are more important than ever. Here is the place for parents, teachers, and home schoolers to find fun, easy-to-implement ideas to get kids thinking in new ways"

We all want to nurture a learning culture in our classroom. One that cultivates skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, synthesis, analysis, critical judgement and interpretation. For this to happen we need to pose learning problems and questions that demand the development of these skills. Well-posed questions can be simple questions but the right questions can drive much more learning and elicit insight that those complex questions that don't ask students to really think. Framing good questions is an art and some suggested questions are discussed here.

Some concrete ideas that will assist teachers to begin to encourage students' critical-thinking skills in the classroom - an beyond.

The teaching of thinking is a critical endeavour for teachers and one that brings enhanced learning opportunities for students. Unfortunately thinking is not something that we naturally do well and as a consequence it is a skill we need to learn.

The post discusses 7 survival skills for the 21st century and how they might be purposefully applied in a classroom. They are: 1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving. 2. Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence. 3. Agility and Adaptability. 4. Initiative and Entrepreneurship. 5. Effective Oral and Written Communication. 6. Accessing and Analysing Information. 7. Curiosity and Imagination

One of the thinking moves that we hope our students will confidently engage with is centred around the disposition of uncovering complexity. As we endeavour to shift our students towards a deeper understanding, the capacity to uncover complexity is a vital step. However, the ability to uncover complexity is itself complex and an excellent example of a skill that is best achieved when considered as a disposition. 

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'Design Thinking' might just be the next 'new' old thing in education. In her recent address to the National Press Club, Catherine Livingstone of The Business Council of Australia included 'Design Thinking' amongst the critical STEM skills required for Australia's future. But what do we mean by 'Design Thinking' and why should educators be interested?