Week 2, Reflection 1.5: De Bono's Thinking Hats

I told you to stay tuned!

In this reflection I will be talking about this week’s activity which was a mobile phone discussion in WikiSpaces using De Bono’s Thinking Hats, but before we get started on my thoughts and reflections how about a little bit of an introduction for those of you who may not be familiar with the concept. And to do so, why not a short video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwu1YlveU_4 

Well I did say it was a short video…

In the Wiki activity that was completed this week we needed to get into groups and put on our “thinking hats” to discuss mobile phone use within classroom settings. The scaffolding used for this exercise (De Bono’s) was an ingenious way to create collaboration between peers because for each hat we had to put ourselves in different mind sets to answer the relevant questions. The easiest way I found to put on each colour hat for the discussion, was to continually check back in on this picture:

While completing the Wiki activity, the learning theories came up, and more specifically if I thought any of the learning theories reflected in the activity.  And personally, I can only see two of the learning theories being reflected in this activity; Social Cognitivism and Connectivism. Social cognitivism is present in this activity because we bounce ideas off of each other, read other peoples point of views and write our own point of view based on what has been collaboratively said and discussed and my own knowledge of the problem. Connectivism in this activity is pretty self-explanatory as we are using an online forum to collaborate ideas with peers from around Australia and even Tasmania (I think) and the discussion of mobile phone falls under connectivism because students are using phones in their classes for work and to connect with other students. 

The wiki was set up so that a few people could put their ideas into each hats box, in different colours so we knew what view belonged to which person. The layout of the wiki space was a good idea, however getting to the finished product was a lot harder than I originally thought it would be. Changing the colour, font and size of the text proved to be quite the challenge, as well as being cautious not to type over anyone else’s views.

I personally liked the engagement of the wiki activity, and didn’t find it too hard to participate as the scaffolding made it easier to answer the questions and voice my opinions. I think that if it was an online activity for students to participate in, students would be engaged and have quite a lot of opinions, and would happily take their studies home with them because they are still interacting with their friends in an educational way. 

However, in saying that there are a lot of bad things about the wiki space that would be an issue in a school environment and would hinder students from learning. The first is cyber-bullying. Although a teacher would monitor the wiki space, students still have the capabilities and ruthlessness to bully others over the internet and will use any means possible. Another drawback of the wiki is the editing design which I said before I found hard to use, time consuming, and sometimes confusing. This will hinder students learning as they will get discouraged if the software is hard to use or takes to long, and will give up before the task is started.

To end this week blogging, I want to leave you with this colourful little picture, because to teach students content, you need to have a belt of effective pedagogies, and technology is one pedagogical method that will help a lot in this modern age to get the content of lessons across to students. 

Have a wonderful week everybody, until next time :D

References:
TheBegtangan (2012) Six Thinking Hats.wmv,  retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwu1YlveU_4%C2%A0

FAHE11001 (2015) De Bono's Six Hats Activity, retrieved from: http://debonoshats.wikispaces.com/

Google Images