Week 2 Assignemnt 1 - Reflection 1 - Sub-Reflection De Bono's Hats

Design aspects

The activities goal was to explore high order thinking about the topic of “What do you think about mobile phones in the classroom?”  The activity was designed using Edward De Bono’s notion of Six Thinking Hats.  De Bono’s Six Hats where placed within a Wiki.  A Wiki is a simple web based application that allows multiple users to add and edit a page’s content.  The Wiki allowed De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to be a scaffold for a group meeting where all participants work together sharing ideas, whilst interpreting those thoughts wearing the same hat at one time.  The De Bono hats represent six different types of thinking.

1. Black – Negative

2. Blue – Process

3. Green – Creative

4. Red – Intuitive

5. Yellow – Positive

6. White – Objective

The idea of the six hats is to ensure all participants are parallel thinking about a subject at one time.  The use of the Wiki was to arrange a class into sub sections of six learners to express their thoughts on the topic.  All class members can access every posting on the Wiki and make comments or provide feedback at the bottom of each page for any student.  

The theory

The activity using a Wiki based discussion forum supported one of the four core learning theory principals ‘Social Constructivism’.  The readings on the EDED20491: ICTs for Learning Design Moodle page (2014) (http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=206461) describe ‘Social Constructivism’ as:  

• Acknowledge learning is social

• Learning, especially in a wiki form can be scaffolded by others 

• Scaffolding in any learning environment is important, especially digital forums 

• The combination of background social action and scaffolding will contribute to individual 

        learning outcomes.

The Wiki was a terrific tool to support a collaborative activity, considering the broadness of the learners in the ICT’s course.  The ICT’s course has both internal and distance learners who can all contribute evenly through the scaffolding of the Wiki.  Secondly the Wiki also enabled learners to contribute not only on topic, but also with no immediate threats on their judgement from their peers.  The Wiki caters for those who are perceived as normally quiet and reserved. The Wiki can also cater for an incognito scenario where users can remain anonymous.

Further to this, Dr Judy Willis highlights a similar approach for learners in here Edutopia webinar (2010) ‘How the brain learns best’.  In the You-Tube presentation, Dr Willis uses a non digital medium example such as a mini whiteboard or laminated piece of paper to be used by each student.  Students are then encouraged to write their responses as instructed by the teacher.  The teacher is simultaneously presented with knowledge of understanding from the learners which in turn empowers the teacher with a personalised feedback channel achieving similar results to that of the Wiki.  I blogged supporting statements on Dr Judy Willis in my ‘Engagement Activity 3 – First Blog Post – Edutopia Reading. http://geoffajoyce.blogspot.com.au/   

These two examples highlighted above have similar outcomes from two different mediums; however, the Wiki definitely has more applications compared to the example of the Dr Judy Willis where each learner had a whiteboard.  Furthermore, both cases demonstrate their connections to higher orders of thinking models.  I recently blogged ‘Linking Bloom’s Taxonomy with the SAMR model’ which highlights the link between both concept maps.  It is evident here the Wiki represents the SAMR model in the ‘Enhancement’ stage, whilst having the potential to move into the ‘Transformation’ stage with its many scaffolding abilities.  The Dr Judy Willis example represents the Blooms Taxonomy at first glance, however if the teacher is using an Interactive Smart Board to instruct the learners, the link from Bloom’s Taxonomy into the SAMR model can be seen due to the substitution of technology in the teachers pedagogy.  http://geoffajoyce.blogspot.com.au/   

Value of scaffolding and learning outcomes 

The use of De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats provided a very succinct step by step scaffold of a complex question such as “What do you think about mobile phones in the classroom?”.  The Six Thinking Hats enabled me personally to think about the question in stages that required thought and understanding from a number of perspectives.  This in turn allowed me to build my scaffold of responses accordingly.  Interestingly, the Six Thinking Hats did seem to cross over somewhat once I became consumed by the topic and had responded to a number of the hats.  I found the guidelines of 40 words per hat did make my points more succinct which highlighted how similar some of my responses across the six hats became.  I did find the white hat ‘Objective’ helpful as it highlighted to me a number of key points such as researching some facts and current examples to be better informed and what I needed to know.  

Finally, I consider the scaffolding of the Wiki to be useful for our diverse group and the diverse responses show that.  I have found it difficult to read through a number of my peer’s responses due to the length of some responses. With enough opportunity to revisit the Wiki, I believe it will help with my own learning outcomes by reviewing my own statements along with others on the topic.  I am now very excited to explore how a wiki can assist my pedagogy in scaffolding activities for my learners so they are able to develop a higher order of thinking and gain a deeper knowledge.