Vientiane College Cyberspace Learning Community

This woman's body of research is amazing, especially in regard to Elder and Paul's Critical Thinking Concepts

Could be interesting o try...perhaps IPC growing out of work on identity???

David Perkin's keynote address from the International Conference on Thinking. It is quite long (an hour) so I haven't watched it yet but think it should be worthwhile.

It is very interesting especially as he gives a clear overview of the development of the 'teaching thinking' movement. What I found the most interesting is his focus on getting students alert and motivated before expecting them to deal with thinking tools (starts at 39.01) . If anyone is interested in watching this but unwilling to deal with the unreliable Internet at school, I downloaded the file so you can get a copy from my computer.

Is it a strategy? A skill? A tactic? Are they interchangable? There is an interesting discussion beginning after the blog too.

@Mike: It may be useful to use this article as an introduction to the New Scientist article in the CCC class as students tend to find that article very difficult. There's also an other article from the same guy where he claims that speaking English causes people to save less money. Follow this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574

This is very interesting. I wonder the extent to which the language itself might well reflect values/way of thinking, though. Perhaps your 'saving' cultures developed language structures like this partly because these structures fit in with their values.

More on the quest for the balance between being supportive and helpful and backing off so students develop autonomy and perseverance in the messy work of learning.

I can almost hear the students saying "but where is the cause and effect marker????" (as neatly provided by making connections!)

I only got 6/10. How about you?

Me too, Leon

How people learn...

This made me think about the 'understanding goals' in our course descriptions and student friendly overviews...are they or could they be essential questions? Have we returned to them since the beginning of the term? Do they have any meaning to the students? Are we uncovering or covering ideas in our classes?

This is a very useful site for phonetics. For each IPA symbol they play an audio recording plus you get an animated diagram of the mouth position, step by step pronunciation descriptions, and a video clip of someone making the sound. Only available for American English (or German or Spanish).

Jeremy ,thanks. Think it could go to students' groups to.

that is ,tooo

Forests and trees

I have the book mentioned in the article (Making Learning Whole) if anyone is interested in reading it. Despite my hatred of baseball, the book captured my attention and fully milks the sports metaphor in a useful way.

Thinking about thinking to think about learning . The PRACTICAL purposes of learning or ACTIVE outcomes of learning are worth noticing

Useful thinking about thinking resouece

Over 200 free online courses from a range of universities.

I have a friend who took one of these free courses (statistics) and was very impressed.

Google has taken Wittgenstein's theory of language and created a new kind of search engine. Their own presentation of this  'Knowledge Graph' can be found at:  http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html

Discussion of the use of rubrics and the role of models. Wiggins argues these must be used hand in hand.

"Again, intellectual virtues are the character traits required for good thinking and learning. They presuppose no controversial moral commitments. " Yes. This. An important distinction to keep in mind. If we come in to the classroom teaching moral or even civic character directly, then we rightly run the risk of being accused of educational imperialism. But, if the moral and civic values we may hold have any real worth, then the inherent value of them should be revealed through the application of intellectually virtuous learning and thinking actions.

and if moral/ethical positions are reached (or deconstructed) either in the classroom, or outside, through the sound application of intellectual actions, they have validity. Anything does not go, not all opinions, values etc... are valid unless we can expose the process by which they were reached and allow that process to be scrutinized.

I know this is just a bit of redundancy, but this suggests that not all values are created equal, and they are not. The must have good reason. Good might be defined imperialistically as Jeremy stated, in that a unilateral agency imposes them, but a reciprocal communicative action may prevail, especially within the ideal or virtuous framed by intellectual character. I have been accussed of esoteric comments, but I think this warrants a visit from Habermas: "We can only exercise tolerance towards other people's beliefs if we reject them for subjectively good reasons. We do not need to be tolerant if we are indifferent to other opinions and attitudes anyway or even appreciate the value of such 'otherness'. The expectation of tolerance assumes that we can endure a form of ongoing non-concurrence at the level of social interaction, while we accept the persistence of mutually exclusive validity claims at the cognitive level of existentially relevant beliefs." In other words, Habermas believes you can't just say, "I don't care" or "This doesn't matter" or "This doesn't happen here" and claim tolerance. You must engage to be tolerant, and you must engage in a way that presents your ideas or beliefs in contrast to the other, and that contrast must be relatable, or what Habermas means by "relevant" is communicable in the logical sense that rational ideas are modular, and they may be fitted into intellectual chains of rational arguments and "ongoing non-concurrence" in social interactions. Through this lens, intellectual virtues occupy toleration/tolerance because intellectual virtues "naturally" lend themselves or, as Jeremy stated, display the inherent value of the ideas through engagement and action which must be communicable and reciprocal, i.e. function as tolerant.