Critical thinking is a very important pillar in 21st century education. By creating critical

thinkers in our youth we are pushing students to be better prepared for the workforce. Critical

thinking is “The process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing,

synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.” If we allow our kids

to utilize critical thinking they are going to be that much more prepared for the real world. Also,

by teaching our students to think critically we are providing students with information and they

can decide whether it is correct or not, what is important about the topic and more without a

teacher guiding them throughout the process. Critical thinkers are those people that think outside

the box or can make a decision and rationalize it.

In our group we decided to start out our presentation by defining critically thinking using

the above definition along with our own. Then we discussed the six degrees of separation in

critical thinking: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

The PowerPoint slide just listed these six and then we elaborated by defining each of the six. We

said that knowledge is the basic recall of facts and data. This is what most of us are used to in

school making it hard to elaborate on what critical thinking is and how it applies to the

classroom. Second we said that comprehension is not just knowing the data associated with

concepts but also communicating relationships among data. After that we discussed application.

Application is taking a concept learned and applying it to another situation. Next, was analysis

which is breaking something down into components or parts to look for trends or evidence to

generalize. Synthesis the fifth degree of separation is the presentation of items or thoughts in a

new way, such as combining ideas to create a theory. Last we discussed evaluation which is

arguing or making a judgment about given information or viewpoint.

After discussing the six degrees of separation we discussed ways that you could promote

critical thinking utilizing technology. The first way we discussed is podcast. Having students

create podcast to discuss their analysis of a topic is a great way to make the analysis concrete to

them. The students can hear their explanations to see if they make sense and share with others in

the class about their findings. We thought that this could be especially used in science with

explanations of hypothesis proved or disproved in experiments. The second technology tool we

thought would be great to implement was YouTube and storytelling because by having the

students create and watch such videos they can take someone else’s perspective on subjects.

Next was Photoshop which we thought would be great to use as a teaching tool. The teacher

could create an image and the students could develop a backstory using the evidence presented in

the photo and prior knowledge. After this we discussed QR code scavenger hunts. Using this

technology tool along with open ended questions allows the student to think critically about what

will come next in the scavenger hunt and why. Lastly we presented the idea of WebQuest

because it utilizes open ended questions and most of the time allows the student decide and

rationalize about certain topics.

After presenting these topics briefly we dove into pillar promotion utilizing technology.

We did this by choosing a poem that students would read. After reading they would analyze the

poem and decide whether to agree or disagree with the idea presented in the poem about trees.

Then they would research an array of topics about trees as evidence. We revised and added these

ideas as questions so that readers could visualize the unending questions that could be asked as a

critical thinker to rationalize their viewpoints. Once students pick a side and conduct research

they will create a Voki that persuades the rest of the class on the side they chose. This Voki must

contain evidence and use much of the research they conducted. The other students will evaluate

or judge their ability to persuade them.

We concluded by showing an awesome short video from YouTube and wrapped up with

summarizing what critical thinking is. We did this by saying critical thinking is the following:

taking different perspectives, thinking outside the box, all about the question, life experience and

exploration. Then after receiving feedback on our first PowerPoint we went back and revised the

areas of concern to the best of our abilities. In conclusion critical thinking is not only important

for the success in 21st century education but also the work force.