Week 2

An online discussion about the use of mobile phones in the classroom resulted on a wiki, scaffolded by De Bono’s six thinking hats. Although I did not participate in the discussion the feedback that I read on the topic forum was a testament to its success. Firstly it must be established exactly what a wiki is. A wiki is a fairly simple website that can be set up for free and contributed by anyone with access to the site. Anything from images to actual content can be edited a saved by various contributors. Secondly we must find out about De Bono and his sketchy (that was my first impression) theory. De Bono's hats is a thinking tool that provides a framework to aid people in thinking clearly by directing them in one direction at a time ( The Opportunity Thinker, 2012). Below is a visual of the concept:

 (Sourced from http://www.olivewriting.com/six-thinking-hats/)

 

The general consensus of the discussion was that there was enormous potential in using mobile phones in the classroom, but also a world of dangers. Ultimately it is up to the individual learning manager to decide whether or not to use the technology, but I guess that wasn’t the point of the exercise. Using wiki as a forum and scaffolding the discussion using de bonos six thinking hats was a huge success I believe. Even though one person was able to edit the wiki at a time, it is still a great way of students collaborating ideas and forming well thought out opinions on different topics. It is a fairly simple technology to use and should not take a large amount of time to master, this makes it even more valuable as the student can understand quickly and will not become frustrated with new ways of doing things.

The musical hats game was something that I was familiar with beforehand and was once again astounded by its success. It provided a structured way of arguing and on reflection the conversations and reasoning behind the arguments were able to be followed with ease. With the focus of each hat arguments made were logical and appropriate to the content. It should also be noted that the provision of such rich conversation in a clear and observable fashion provides a perfect stage for the high level synthesising at the top of Blooms Taxonomy (CQU, 2012)

I think that overall the wiki forum was a great place to discuss ideas and the scaffolding of De Bono’s six thinking hats was a great compliment to logically structuring these discussions.