What is Critical Thinking? In the contemporary times, critical thinking has emerged as a skill. You acquire this skill from the grass root level in the classrooms from the activities and approaches that you come across in your daily life. Debate and critical thinking go hand in hand, as debate lessons help in improving the critical thinking skills of an individual.
Kids at a primary level can benefit from developing critical thinking skills. The question however remains how do we do it? Lessons in logic and reasoning have proven to be effective in improving a child’s Intelligent Quotient at the school level itself. But these lessons are not taught at high school level as an obligatory part of the curriculum.
The Classroom Blog
Critical thinking can be enhanced with substantive discussions on subject matter and appropriate online interaction by creating your own anonymous blog. Students could be given assignments keeping in mind the latest trends of the technology, like publishing a write up on a blog. Rome was not built in a day; hence the transformation will take a much longer time than is estimated.
The assignments ought to have the academic focus, but an appropriate interaction on social and professional digital media has also become the norm of the day. A purposeful homework like writing a blog could be a beginning towards an appropriate approach to digital interactions.
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The User-Friendly Approach
In order to embark on a digital venture, several questions need to be addressed like can we have an anonymous blog? There are so many platforms to create a blog, which would actually be suitable for the young teenage students, shielding them from the unfortunate possibility of cyber bullying or exposure to web stranger dangers.
An education blog site would be ideal for the students to publish their debating critical thinking ideas on a subject. Even though the blog posts by the students remain anonymous on the education sites, the moderator still remains a teacher who can approve the posts before the publishing.
Express your Opinion
An idea for debate could be drawn from the weekly discussions had in class and the students could make anonymous blog posts on the best anonymous blog platform typing a minimum of at least four sentences, of their ideas on the subject matter being discussed. Their responses however ought to be backed up with research on the idea.
It is a very difficult task for a teacher to create a subject matter to instigate critical thinking in a student. The teacher’s aim here is to teach her students how to make a blog post in a respectable manner that will promote peer interactions and critical thinking both. Students should be allowed two responses, one to the moderator and another to a peer initiating a debate environment digitally. Also, anonymous blogging is not a daily feature that can be implemented on students who might not have internet access at home.
An Honest and Thorough Response
How to promote an anonymous blog? Students can create a pseudonym to keep their anonymity on the classroom blog intact. They can express their debate ideas freely by staying anonymous without the fear of backlash. Using a pseudonym will help the students in creating new and fresh digital identities for themselves. It also eliminates any bias that may occur between the peers as well.
The lack of bias will lead to an honest opinion sharing respectfully on a digital front too. The teachers should however encourage an appropriate and academic tone even to blogging. The diction and tone of the blog written will severely impact the perspective of the reader towards the blogger’s character.
Follow the Guidelines
For the students to engage in respectful and professional debatable interactions, it is important to answer the question of how to have a successful anonymous blog? For a successful experience at anonymous blogging, the mentor has to take into account a lot of factors. These include encouraging a difference of opinion at the blog front in a healthy way; no opinion should be criticized as being meaningless to hurt the blogger’s feelings; disagreement should be portrayed in a respectful manner. There ought to be solid textual evidence to support the disagreement and disciplinary actions should be taken against those who make use of the blogging platform inappropriately.
Changing Perceptions
Most of the employers hiring fresh graduates out of college prefer that their employees have a stronger communication as well as critical thinking skills. The soft skills of the students at school and college levels are enhanced by participating in debate exercises conducted as teaching tools.
Critical thinking can therefore be clearly defined as a higher order of cognitive skill, which is indispensable for a student and prepares them to respond to a variety of complex problems that may arise someday either in their personal or professional lives eventually.
Barry Lachey is a Professional Editor at Zobuz. Previously He has also worked for Moxly Sports and Network Resources “Joe Joe.” He is a graduate of the Kings College at the University of Thames Valley London. You can reach Barry via email or by phone.
