Week 2 Reflection: de Bono’s Hats

Arbitrarily integrating ICT into the classroom without intelligent design will not result in an effective digital pedagogical tool. Therefore merely because this task utilised the online format of a wiki doesn’t make it a good example of sound digital pedagogy. Instead the design of the task focused on ICT enabled collaboration, scaffolded individual analysis and evaluation which are what I feel made it engaging and effective. I have listed below how the task design incorporated elements of Bloom’s taxonomy and the SAMR model. My personal experiences of the task are in italics.  

Blooms Taxonomy

Knowledge and Comprehension: To complete this task effectively learners needed to read through and comprehend the course materials.

 I found some of the reading hard going and if that was all there was to the task I would have data dumped most of it by the end of the week.

Application: By thinking of where and how mobile phones fit into good digital pedagogy learners had to apply this knowledge gained from the course readings to a relevant and contentious issue.

 Since I had to apply the knowledge I constantly referred back to the readings and hence was able to draw out and remember key ideas and concepts from the texts.

Analysis: By introducing the scaffold of de Bono’s hats it was impossible to consider the question from all six perspectives without rigorous analysis of your own ideas and opinions.

The scaffolding was particularly useful for me to help with my analysis of this issue, as it helped me to clearly discern between my ideas, my feelings and my knowledge or facts. I was then able to construct a much clearer picture in my mind of the entire issue.

Evaluation: The very nature of this task almost forces you to evaluate your ideas against those of your peers.

This was confronting as I like to see things from a pass/fail point of view. Which I consequently realised was completely off the point of the activity. What I needed to concentrate on was what I could learn from my peers not what I had “failed” at i.e.  Things I hadn't considered or researched.

Synthesis: The evaluation process in turn enabled learners to draw from a large variety of sources to form an informed opinion or perspective.

Personally it enabled me to formulate some embryonic ideas on how to how best to include mobile phones in the classroom in the future. Perhaps the most crucial thing I took away from this activity is that I didn't stop thinking about this issue once I completed the activity. This is what I aim for in my classrooms, to inspire the ongoing question of why? 

SAMR Model

Modification: Instead of using a classroom to facilitate a brainstorming session this activity introduced a wiki in which learners could all contribute and read other students posts regardless of when or where they were situated.

I loved this aspect of the task as it meant that even though there were small groups all learners could view the entire class and benefit from all the ideas in their own time.

Redefinition: This task redefines the concept of traditional “group work” or collaborative learning, in that it allows students to contribute anonymously and in their own time. However at the same time it was impossible to complete without having been influenced by or exposed to someone else’s ideas.

 Essentially what we have come up with is a class consensus, a truly united effort in which each individual contributes as much or as little as they feel comfortable with, and the result is a plethora of ideas, concepts, research and perspective to consider. This has started to break down some of my strongly held preference for individual work, as I can see what a powerful learning tool true collaborative learning is.

This activity and its design displayed good digital pedagogy because it exploited the potential of ICT to facilitate collaborative learning and focused the task on higher level thinking through the scaffolding of de Bono’s hats. I feel that the scaffolding was crucial to the success of this task, without it I could have easily gone off on a rant about how mobile phones are destroying society and not once even considered using higher thinking processes. 

By introducing the scaffolding I was forced to analyse everything I wrote from that single perspective without getting sidetracked by irrelevant tangents and personal soapboxes. I was impressed and surprised by how clearly and succinctly this simple tool enables me to think and express myself. This scaffold also helped me to evaluate and synthesize my peer’s ideas by enabling me to easily catalogue ideas into the various perspectives and then identify the common themes from which to build an overall cohesive picture.