Comments on: LTGR Ep. #34 - “Critical Thinking” http://www.ltgreenroom.org/episodes/45 The LT Green Room is a podcast for Renewal, Retooling and Conversations about Learning. It is co-hosted by Susan Manning and Dan Balzer and its show topics are often drawn from members of LearningTimes.org, a free online community of education and training professionals from across the globe. The LT Green Room gives listeners (and ourselves) an opportunity to reflect on what they're doing behind the scene that results in an effective learning experience. Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:41:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Alan Selig http://www.ltgreenroom.org/episodes/45#comment-20513 Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:25:58 +0000 http://www.ltgreenroom.org/episodes/45#comment-20513 I am just getting around to listening to this episode (life has been more chaotic than usual the last few months!) I'm sad to see no comments following this Green Room episode on Critical Thinking and how we can foster it in an online environment. My first thoughts during the session were about whether we have a formal definition of "critical thinking". I was aware that I have a functional definition but I couldn't point to an educational theorist or an "in-print" definition. That is an obvious concern, unless everyone else accepts me and mine as definitive. Is is fostering critical thinking to ask the class members to move beyond the knowledge base and into the synthesis of various (discreet) data and/or apply the knowledge in the professional setting? Next spring I will be teaching a course that (I hope) will encourage participants to do that. We'll look at what are usually discreet knowledge sets (theology as a written set of knowledge and art as visual representations of similar or different truthes). Then the participants will be encouraged to find ways to "remix" the data so as to create a different learning/experiencing environment in a church congregation (where they will do most of their teaching/proclaiming.) Thanks for the suggestions of online documents that explore elements of critical thinking. Those will be among my goals immediately after sending in this comment. Alan I am just getting around to listening to this episode (life has been more chaotic than usual the last few months!) I’m sad to see no comments following this Green Room episode on Critical Thinking and how we can foster it in an online environment.

My first thoughts during the session were about whether we have a formal definition of “critical thinking”. I was aware that I have a functional definition but I couldn’t point to an educational theorist or an “in-print” definition. That is an obvious concern, unless everyone else accepts me and mine as definitive.

Is is fostering critical thinking to ask the class members to move beyond the knowledge base and into the synthesis of various (discreet) data and/or apply the knowledge in the professional setting?

Next spring I will be teaching a course that (I hope) will encourage participants to do that. We’ll look at what are usually discreet knowledge sets (theology as a written set of knowledge and art as visual representations of similar or different truthes). Then the participants will be encouraged to find ways to “remix” the data so as to create a different learning/experiencing environment in a church congregation (where they will do most of their teaching/proclaiming.)

Thanks for the suggestions of online documents that explore elements of critical thinking. Those will be among my goals immediately after sending in this comment.

Alan

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