Objectives

There is nothing new about collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking.

What is new- and the reason these are called '21st Century Skills' is two-fold. All of these skills have become transformed by the technology-based tools that enable communication, collaboration, and creativity to happen and shared in ways- across time, distance, and users that were impossible only a few years ago. And secondly, there has been a gradual realization that the jobs of future will increasingly require so-called 'soft skills' in collaborating, learning, and adapting to keep up with the ever-changing demands of the knowledge economy. And while critical thinking requires access to a wide variety of information, this access has become transformed by the resources available on the internet.

The objective of this module is to to become familiar with learning both traditional and technology-based creativity, communication and collaboration tools, including notetaking, document sharing, sketching, computer-aided design, and video.

Scratch ( https://scratch.mit.edu/) , through enabling and encouraging students to share their projects and enable 'remixing' makes collaboration a reality for students.

We explore remixing and support people connecting to each other to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and build on one another's work.

In-class Activity: Remix Scratch Project- Build Upon the Ideas of Others

In-class activity: Collaborate on a Google Doc

Apps for Remote Collaboration:

Padlet https://padlet.com/auth/login

Padlet is a virtual bulletin board, that lets students 'pin' their ideas, including ideas, images, and videos, to a shared bulletin board

Jamboard https://jamboard.google.com/ , part of G-Suite,is a collaborative, interactive whiteboard that let students post notes, do drawings, etc.

Critical Thinking

• What is Critical Thinking? https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html

• Can Critical Thinking be Taught? https://hechingerreport.org/scientific-research-on-how-to-teach-critical-thinking-contradicts-education-trends/

• • “If you lack background knowledge about the topic, ample evidence from the last 40 years indicates you will not comprehend the author’s claims in the first place,” wrote Willingham, citing his own 2017 book.

  • Scientists are united in their belief that content knowledge is crucial to effective critical thinking. And he argues that the best approach is to explicitly teach very specific small skills of analysis for each subject. For example, in history, students need to interpret documents in light of their sources, seek corroboration and put them in their historical context. That kind of analysis isn’t relevant in science, where the source of a document isn’t as important as following the scientific method.

Critical Thinking is embedded through out the Massachusetts STEM frameworks, asking students to use evidence to support a conclusion.

PreK-LS2-1(MA). Use evidence from animals and plants to define several characteristics of living things that distinguish them from non-living things.

PreK-LS2-2(MA). Using evidence from the local environment, explain how familiar plants and animals meet their needs where they live.

2.K-2-ETS1-3. Analyze data from tests of two objects designed to solve the same design problem to compare the strengths and weaknesses of how each object performs.

But can critical thinking skills be strengthened through practice?

One such exercise might be to take a poll of students as to their opinion about a current issue, whether in their own lives or in the wider world --and then ask them to make the case for the opposite view.

In-class Activity: Critical Thinking

https://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/2581-critical-thinking-activities-exercises

Can Critical Thinking be taught?

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/critical-thinking-why-it-so-hard-teach

What do all these studies boil down to? First, critical thinking (as well as scientific thinking and other domain-based thinking) is not a skill. There is not a set of critical thinking skills that can be acquired and deployed regardless of context. Second, there are metacognitive strategies that, once learned, make critical thinking more likely. Third, the ability to think critically (to actually do what the metacognitive strategies call for) depends on domain knowledge and practice. For teachers, the situation is not hopeless, but no one should underestimate the difficulty of teaching students to think critically.

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Communicating with Video: Making Learning Visible

Margaret Burns, Weston Middle School arts and technology teacher, demonstrates how videos recorded on smartphones are uploaded for editing into WeVideo.

Student teams can record video using their smartphones, upload the raw files to their Google Drive accounts, and collaboratively edit them into a finished video on their Chromebooks using WeVideo, a browser-based video editor, adding voiceovers and reflections.

Our students live in a world in which communicating with video has become both a basic literacy skill, and a way of sharing what students are doing in school with a wider world.

Within the WeVideo dashboard, the teacher can review the works-in-progress, and make suggestions for further revisions.

The final versions are then uploaded to the assignments folder on Google Classroom.

The 3-minute documentary video is the “5-paragraph essay” of our time.

Instructions for video for Students

Communicating through Active Listening: Effective Note-Taking

https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/effective-note-taking-in-class/

There are many real-time transcription apps( such Otter AI https://otter.ai/login ) that can convert speech to text with great accuracy.

However, taking handwritten notes is far more effective. Since you can't write down every word, your brain is forced to actually listen to what is said, and decide what is important enough to write down. This process has been shown to leave much more lasting knowledge than verbatim notes.

The best use for speech-to-text is for creating closed captions for a video, or translations into another language.

See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796?hl=en

Creativity in the classroom

"Creativity is intelligence having fun"- Albert Einstein

• Create a compassionate, accepting environment. Since being creative requires going out on a limb, students need to trust that they can make a mistake in front of you.

• Use Creative Constraint: "Only in fetters is liberty. Without its banks, a river could not be" Projects need to be both meaningful and manageable. Each end product( such as a video) should be unique, while utilizing a common set of technical skills( video editing and composition).

• Be present with students’ ideas. Have more off-the-cuff conversations with students. Find out what their passion areas are, and build those into your approach.

• Encourage autonomy. Don’t let yourself be the arbiter of what “good” work is. Instead, give feedback that encourages self-assessment and independence.

• Re-word assignments to promote creative thinking. Try adding words like “create,” “design,” “invent,” “imagine,” “suppose,” to your assignments. Adding instructions such as “Come up with as many solutions as possible” or “Be creative!” can increase creative performance.

• Give students direct feedback on their creativity. Lots of students don’t realize how creative they are, or get feedback to help them incorporate “creative” into their self-concept. Explore the idea of “creative competence” alongside the traditional academic competencies in literacy and mathematics. When we evaluate something, we value it! Creating a self-concept that includes creativity.- http://psychlearningcurve.org/creative-teaching-and-teaching-creativity-how-to-foster-creativity-in-the-classroom/