Teaching critical thinking

One of the main concerns of teachers is to teach students critical thinking. To do so, teachers should create and monitor media projects in the classroom. One of these projects could be to have students create a news channel and deliver the news to the rest of the classroom. In this project, students would be responsible for gathering information, deciding what to film and what topics to discard and finally filming this as if it were a news channel. I think that having students make a media project would develop their critical thinking and allow them to rethink about the role of media in our society. In this project, students would have to analyse the information and decide critically what to film and what to dismiss.

In our society, media controls what we see and hear. When we turn on the news, the content that we see has been viewed and revised. There are many topics and information that are not aired because they are “not suitable” or “unimportant” or because of any other reason. A good example of this would be the real story of 2 reporters that refused to lie to the public, after unravelling a story that would have endangered an important corporation. I have written about this story before, so I will not go into more details, but I will give you the link once more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0AL4yml3bw.

After this project, the teacher could show this short video and ask the students what they think of this false representation in order to start a class discussion. Moreover, the teacher could also have the students research more on this subject and reproduce the story that the reporters in the video were not able to show the public. By having the students analyse and produce a news channel, they would have to think critically about every story as well as how to present it to their classmates.

Advantages vs. Disadvantages

I have previously written about how technology can be used as an asset in the classroom. Using internet, powerpoint or any technology related device can help teachers deliver their lessons and keep the students engaged. However, we all know that there are many disadvantages that teachers should be aware of. For example, I think that a major issue in today’s society is cyberbullying. Many teenagers are victim of this negative use of internet. Therefore, I think that if teachers are using media devices in their classroom and showing students how to use them, they should also make sure that students understand the negative and undesirable outcomes. By making students aware of such consequences, teachers could reduce cyberbullying and thus create a better social and learning environment. Moreover, another important problem related to media and school would be cyber predators. I know that a teacher may not be the best person to address this, but I also think that students should be warned and told what to do if they are in a problematic situation. I think that a specific person in school should be appointed to address these problems, such as a counsellor. I think that it is important to promote both the positive as well as the negative use of media devices and their outcomes, since some students are not aware of the consequences of their acts on internet, for example. Technology is very helpful in the classroom, but the majority of the students also have access to it outside of school. Therefore, they should be made aware of the negative consequences that can happen.

Powerpoint

Powerpoints are used more and more often in classrooms since they can be used in more than one way. This application is very popular since is basic functions are quite easy to figure out. However, for those who have some extra time or knowledge with powerpoints, many more features can be used and applied in a presentation. A few weeks ago, we had to choose a subject and create a presentation. We had to integrate certain features that are not needed in basic presentations. However, since we didn’t have a lab class on powerpoints, we had to figure out how to integrate them by ourselves. I thought that I was going to have a lot of trouble since I usually don’t put many features in my presentations. However, it was easier than I had first thought since I only had to explore in the features that I did not know about and try some out. For those that I could not find, such as embedding videos, I searched on YouTube and found the information that I needed pretty quickly. Therefore, I was a bit disappointed that we did not spend a lot of time on powerpoint presentations during the lab. However I think that having to do this on my own forced me to discover new features that I would not have been aware of otherwise. Overall, powerpoint presentations are full of features that are not used very often. In my opinion, discovering these features on my own allowed me to discover other ones as well. Moreover, I will be able to use the ones that I discovered on future presentations since I learn by doing thus I will remember the features that I discovered better.

technology in the classroom

I think that technology should be used in classrooms, as it is constantly evolving in our day to day lives. However, should teachers also rely on technology when assigning homework? This question came up to me, as I was having a conversation with one of my friends. Her little brother, who is in grade 6, has had a couple of classes based on technology use and uses computers as well as media in his classes. One of his teacher even assigned homework through internet, on a website dedicated for classroom use. However, he does not have a fast internet connection and his homework that should take only about 20 to 30 minutes takes more than an hour. Therefore, should teachers rely so much on computers and internet, as to assign homework through them? Some families do not even own a computer, how are children supposed to do their assignment when they are not computer literate? I know that nowadays, people see media and internet as very present in their live, but this is not the case for many other families. By assigning homework this way, teachers are giving an unfair advantage to some students and putting others behind in their work. I think that technology is present and important to have in a classroom, however we should not presume that every student has the same ability and ease with it. Therefore, I think that teachers should use media in the classroom, but should not assume that every child has access to internet, or any other technology device used in the classroom. I know that technology is more and more important in today’s society and must therefore be taught and used in the classroom, where it is available to every child. However, assigning homework by internet is not fair to every child. Teachers should keep this in mind and keep the use of media devices where it is available to every student.