The gathering of student opinions and research on the topic of using mobile phones in the classroom was well supported by the use of DeBono's Thinking Hats. This collection tool, designed to enhance thinking across a range of perspectives, enabled me as a participant to not only voice my opinion but also view opinions of other students. This information was collated through the use of a simple graphic organiser showing each student response. I would suggest though that further collation of the information to enable viewing of all responses at the same time would be beneficial to students who may not be engaged enough to view more than the one page of responses that they were adding to.
This learning experience engages students through comparison of their responses with others. Further opportunities to discuss and provide feedback relating to other students' ideas would be beneficial to further create new learning opportunities along with this collation and information evaluation activity. While offering their own opinions or researched points of view, students are also led to form ideas and possibly change their own opinions through analysis of the other students' thoughts and information. This would lead to the assumption that this form of learning experience, scaffold in this way, would fit under the banner of the 'Social Constructivism' learning theory. Students are drawn to construct new and sometimes different knowledge through the support of their peers' ideas and knowledge.
However, because of the peer engagement we could also view this collaboration as that of a 'Constructivism' based learning experience, depending on the actual expertise of my peers in this course. It would be important in this case to determine relevant and educated information provided in the graphic organiser.
Initially the 'DeBono Thinking Hats' framework tool enabled a clear focus on one particular area of thought as each hat/ thought focus was viewed separately. Through the comparison and analysis of each different hat and collation of all students' ideas, I arrived at a conclusion. This conclusion may differ from other students' summations depending on our differing perspectives. To truly deliver my new (or unchanged) opinion or my new understanding and knowledge, further individual presentation of this final opinion and acquisition of knowledge may be needed to show my particular progression of learning. I suggest that this would be achieved by a teacher in a school classroom through analysis of student discussion and topical engagement. Used as an on-line activity, its worth may be negated by distance and time restrictions as each of the on-line participants delivers their input at different times suitable to them, and at times without revisiting the Wiki for further analysis. This may give those that post at a later date, more diverse information from which to learn and form opinions.
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