PLENK2010 Week 6: Using PLE/Ns effectively: skills, mindsets, and critical literacies

How have you developed in your understanding of PLE/Ns? After discussions this past week, we've closed the loop on the main topics that relate to defining and evaluating PLE/Ns...detailing tools...and considering future directions.

In week 6, we will focus on the skills needed to be successful with PLE/Ns. What does a learner need to be able to do/to think/to be in order to function in a digital world? The term "literacy" is central here. What does it mean to be literate? By my (George) definition literacy is the ability to participate in the dominant modes of discourse in a particular era.

Being literate requires technical skills, conceptual mindsets, as well as an attitude of tolerance of complexity and ambiguity. These skills are not prominent in many schools and universities. Many students aren't digitally literate either. Our generation is in a transition phase where those who need to teach literacy are often not digitally literate themselves. So it shouldn't surprise educators that students sometimes do silly things online - they are raising themselves in this environment...the mentors are not the adults and teachers that modelled behaviour for previous generations. Mind you, that might not actually be a bad thing .

Readings for this week:

New Media Literacy in Education (Robin Good, Howard Rheingold)

Critical Thinking Resources

Some factors to consider when designing semi-autonomous learning environments

Speaking in LOL Cats: What literacy means in the digita



Critical thinking

This is one interesting definition:

Is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

Critical Thinking Defined by Edward Glaser

In a seminal study on critical thinking and education in 1941, Edward Glaser defines critical thinking as follows “The ability to think critically, as conceived in this volume, involves three things: ( 1 ) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences, (2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods. Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. It also generally requires ability to recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems, to gather and marshal pertinent information, to recognize unstated assumptions and values, to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination, to interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments, to recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between propositions, to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations, to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives, to reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience, and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life.



I was tweeting about the course and I was sent this presentation by the author. It explains what Critical thinking is.

Introduction to Critical Thinking

View more presentations from Zaid Alsagoff.