Reason in the age of Information
With information more readily available than ever what are some tools we can give to students to assist them in finding more logical answers to everyday problems?
Tina,
Your last sentence really captures the essence of what we are attempting to do in working to get our students to do critical thinking. We need to help them to understand the value of using technology as a resource as well as being able to use their own 3 lb. computer to think through possible solutions to different problems.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Jeremiah and Gary,
I agree there are so many little bits and bytes of information available, much of it duplications, much of it incorrect, and we can all get a bit of "TMT" sometimes. (Too much technology) On the other hand, using electronic medical records as an example, when that huge volume of data is organized well, trends emerge. Answers we may not have seen in a huge pile of paper become more obvious using technology. Helping our students learn how to stay focused, filter through non-sense, and gather good quality information is an important tool in making sound conclusions.
Teresita,
This is an important point because students need to see how to personalize information in a way that give this information value to them. Just having information or knowledge is not good enough. A person must be able to do something with the knowledge if he or she is going to be successful.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
With information readily accessible to students, teachers may require students to summarize and apply gathered information in their life experiences and make decisions in the most possible extent.
Jeremiah,
I think you would want to give them steps to follow so that they can see a sequence to the information they collect and how to put that information into categories. Once that is done then they can propose solutions to see if they are feasible.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Peter,
Thank you for these on target remarks because these are the students I am teaching as well. It is a challenge to help them see the value of common sense and how being logical in problem solving efforts will result in success both in school and in the workplace.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
J
Great question.
It seems that the first point that you made was that there is more Information readily avaiable, so it begs to answer that younger students today have information overload and there are too many opinions on every subject matter, and many students are not trained/raised to dicern, research and use critical objective thinking to make the correct and logical decisions.
I find with my students is that when you pose logical common sense questions to them , they usually hide behind a silly remark to offset them not understanding what was asked and play it off as being smart.
I am not blamimg the youth today as I have several in my household but we have a society today in which all answers are right and you have a right to my opinion without sound reasonings.
