Tuesday, May 5, 2009

What's the Critical Thinking? & Are you a Critical Thinker?

What is the critical thinking?
Are you a critical thinker?

In my opinion, the basic concept of "Critical thinking" is: an ability of logical thinking, we use it every day. It makes us better understand the information from our life.
I was not a good critical thinker before I learned this course. After one semester, I learned much knowledge and methods from our professor, textbooks, and talk with my classmates. I understood the methods how to become a critical thinker. Let me show my summary as followed:

1. Ask questions
Not only ask questions to others for an answer, but also ask questions to yourself for an answer. And ask questions about the answers you get. At last, to think about the questions, ask questions about the questions.

2. Define the problem; try to know how do I describe it?
An accurate use of words improves our thinking. To find the definition of the words from the dictionaries, make sure that you understand what the vocabulary means.

3. Examine the evidence
The goal is to have evidence or facts that are reliable and true. When we think well, we assess all facts, derive as many inferences as we can, and devise strategies for confirming or obtaining more information.

At last, we need to make a conclusion from evidence. This course brought me a new concept "Critical Thinking", I like it and I'll use it every time in the future.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Apr21 Mindmap (CRCB11 Advanced Strategies)

Apr21 Exercise (CRCB11 Advanced Strategies)

CRCB C11 Exercises

Exercise 11J
Outlines pp.368

Use this textbook’s table of contents to answer the following questions.

1. What information is being presented in this outline?

An overview of the textbook – the types of information to be taught

2. Using the table of contents, list two topics covered in Chapter 4, “Managing Your Reading Time.”

1) What is efficient reading?
2) Becoming a more efficient reader

Apr21 Summary (CRCB11 Advanced Strategies)

CRCB C11 Summary

This chapter authors often use visual aids to help their readers better understand the information they are presenting. Visual information reinforces and supplements reading material. Types of visual aids include mind maps, outlines, charts, diagrams, graphs, illustrations, photographs, and time lines. The type of information being conveyed determines what type of visual aid an author will use. Learning how to read visuals will help understand and remember the textual information they illustrate.
An effective reading and study strategy is to make own visual aids. To create an effective visual aid, you have to recognize the important elements in what reading and be able to prioritize and organize them in a logical and useful format. It will quickly obvious how well know the material, you can’t draw a diagram or devise a table if you don’t understand what you have read or heard. In many instances, an effective visual will save from taking as many as many notes from notes from text or lectures.

When reading about a confusing subject of being taught about a confusing subject just words won’t always get the point across. Visual aids play such a huge role in the learning process and when making presentations. An example when a visual aid makes learning easier is when learning about the digestive system one can first explain in words but you can only get so much from words, but seeing a picture of the digestive tract it makes the word so much more clear and easier to understand. When presenting in a front of colleagues or in front of your peers’ visual aid proves to be extremely helpful in either getting your argument across or your point across.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Apr14 Mindmap (TFY C11, Induction)

Apr14 Summary (TFY C11, Induction)

TFY, chapter 11 Summary

This chapter discusses a number of the methods that have traditionally been used to learn about the whole from a study of its parts. They include sensory observation, enumeration, analogical reasoning, pattern recognition, causal reasoning, and statistical reasoning.

Induction is a major kind of reasoning process in which a conclusion is drawn from particular cases. And a preliminary conclusion derived from inductive reasoning is called a hypothesis. All of the “conclusions” given in the preceding examples were prematurely drawn; their sampling was insufficient to warrant their conclusions. For example, a preschooler might conclude that dolphins are fish because they live in water and swim as fish do. After that we have to be continually willing to modify and refine our hypotheses depending on the feedback we receive. Perhaps, Adolescents might have heard that dolphins are mammals. They could test this hypothesis by identifying the definition of mammal and testing whether it applies to dolphins.