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Ask a question from your peers to help you in your professional work. Seek different points of view on a topic that interests you. Start a thought-provoking conversation about a hot, current topic. Encourage your peers to join you in the discussion, and feel free to facilitate the discussion. As a community of educators, all members of the Career Ed Lounge are empowered to act as a discussion facilitator to help us all learn from each other.

Critical thinking and the media

I always find it disturbing the number of students who either don't know how to recognize acceptable sources of information and/or receive their information from merely one source. To my first point, in eight years of teaching I have always had at least one student reference Wikipedia as a source. Secondly, with ten media conglomerates controlling all forms of media worldwide, I like to remind students that we need to be critical of the information being broadcast to us be it print or televised media. I tell them to pay particular attention to the motivation behind the "stories" that are shared with viewers.

Fallacious Arguments

I taught rhetoric at Roosevelt Academy in The Netherlands for a year and found one of the most important things to discuss with students early in the term is how to both be aware of and avoid arguments based on fallacy. Often times individuals recognize the fallacy in the argument but continue to try debate it using reason. Being able to identify and label fallacious arguments when they are first presented saves a great deal of time. My disciplines are Communication and Sociology, and I've found it very beneficial to introduce my students in both courses to this concept.

Creative problem solving

More and more students aren't willing to take the time to find answers they want someone to give it to them.As an example when I taught them coding I looked up some silly or really strange codes for them to find. It made the class and learning process more fun

Critical thinking

Many students are uncomfortable speaking out in class. S I liked the idea of starting out with simple nonthreatening questions

Critical thinking

I do a power point every night. So to try and keep the attention of everyone at the end of these I ask specific questions pertaining to the power point and then after the student has answered I go further by asking him his opinion and would he do things differently. If so what would he do to change things? If he wouldn't change anything what was it that made him feel everything was so perfectly right. I don't do this in an attacking way -I just want them to think.

scaffolding

I am going to try scaffolding. I think it will work great with new students.

pretest

I like the pretest method. I am going to use this next term.

hands on

I find with trade students love the hands on. It seems they pick up great knowledge from it.

critical thinking

Critical thinking requires reasoning and the ability to ask questions taking advantage of the many resources avaliable to the student. Critical thinkers need to know what 'makes then tick' so they know which angle to take when confronted with a paarticular situation and then over time judgement will be developed

critical thinking

to better understand critical thinking it is important to be patient to stand back assess the information and analize the content being presented. One should qestion and repeat critical thinking exercises to get a better understanding of it's benifits

Learning your students

It is very important to me as an Instructor to learn each students learning style. Everyong retains infomation differently.

student variations

I have found that within one class that there are students that have different levels of intellegence. Some are logical while others are more body/kinetic in their intellegence having to experience a problem before they can find a solution for it. The older the student the more analytical they tend to be and the better critical thinker. Do you think that experience is a critical factor?

Scaffolding and strategic integration

I realize that scaffolding is a temporary device that is used to learn new information and strategic integration is developing learned stuff that can be applied. Does strategic integration replace scaffolding in the learnng process as the learner becomes more independent?

Judicious Review

I plan to use judicious review to help students better integrate what they are learning into their skill set overtime to prevent automatic deletion so that they can transfer the new content/skill into a service learning experience that will help the students to increase their confidence and decrease the risk of failure.

Understanding how to use filters in instruction

The realization that instructors need to assist adult learners to reset their mind filters (deletion, distortion and generalization) so that they will be able to delete information that does not have relevancy and keep/store non-distorted knowledge, skills and attitudes needed in long-term memory to perform both concrete and abstract thinking will help me to better understand how to structure learning activities so that the student is not overwhelmed in the learning process.

Short and long term memory

I find it interesting that students discover their own strengths and weaknesses relating to short and long term memory. I find there are usually students who excel in practical or theory classes..I try to think of new ways to help them learn all of the information to help pass theory exams. The practical exams are usually easier for them.

Hands on

While lecturing in any course I try to add both concrete, and abstract learning into class discussions. I have a hard time adding hands on learning to lecture courses though. Games are one way, but I do not use them. What other ways can I encorporate hands on learning into a lecture class?

Invaluable

Immersed in a land where there are so many different educational theories in the teaching universe created by so many theorists, predominantly male ones may I add, learning the MI theory by Howard Gardner was one of the best things I could ever learn because it made me very cognizant of my delivery and approach in different classes with different students. Personally, I feel this theory works seamlessly in conjunction with differentiated instruction and I feel it is when you lead a student to how they learn best that they actually will. So many students get discouraged so easily because they "studied" but it didn't work. They sat on their bed with the tv in the background, their text messages ringing endlessly and they stared at the book for 4 hours, so they therefore must do well on the test because they "studied." Or they then try the study methods of their classmates, like the ever challenging note cards. Kinesthetic learners use these so often, but after writing them out they never use them kinesthestically, and wonder why they don't work. But as educators, when we know the theories behind the practice, we can help guide our students into the right study and note taking practices that can best benefit them by understanding how they learn best. Students strong on Gardner's musical category seem amazed by the suggestion to sing their notes to their favorite song, or turn it into a rap, or to play reinforcing music in the background while studing. Personally I feel learning this theory was the most important of my career thus far, and if you can't tell by now, I certainly buy into the concept!

Students Educational Levels

Many students have been out of school for many years that is way I feel the need to pre-test my students so it will give me a better idea, of what direction I might have to take with some of my slower based students.

Learning Styles

As a instructor you must pre-test the students and it will help you assess your student's.