A Critical Thinking Exercise – Which would you rather battle?

See how this simple exercise had over 100 people brainstorming and voting on the best arguments. Industry professionals meet VET teachers to bring currency to the curriculum.

Ask yourself this.  Which would you rather battle?

1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

This was the question posed to attendees of the Industry Currency day where over 110 VET teachers were asked to share and debate their views using GroupMap as their audience response system. This professional development session was focused on ways to improve critical thinking skills – a key learning outcome for 21st-century learning in any curriculum.

Each person was asked to pick a side initially. Working in small groups, they then added arguments to be shared more widely as part of the collaborative learning exercise. Here are some of the ideas they came up with.

With the opposing views  captured, this became the perfect fodder for a healthy debate. But we wanted to take it one step further to work out which arguments were the strongest.

Use of voting techniques to identify logical fallacies

Using the concepts of logical fallacies (flaws in logic) and the simple like/dislike buttons, people voted up the arguments that they felt best made their case.  The best and strongest arguments would then float to the top and the results shown. The goal was to focus on the strongest arguments put forward by the each side.

Running through the ideas allowed people to comment and to support and challenge what was being said by their peers. This form of collective learning certainly isn’t something you could do with simple polling.

The group discussed the arguments presented and considered the impact this had on their position on the matter. Whilst a hypothetical discussion, it highlights the importance of forming a good argument free from logical flaws.

Hosted by Training Council (FAPSTC) and held at Curtin University, the Industry engagement forum provided a technology driver environment for the VET sector to interact with speakers and industry representatives. More than 40% of year 12 students undertaking a VET qualification in 2014.  The event was an outstanding success.

“Alison Sweet, event organizer from FAPSTAC said: “Teachers can gain insights to help them take industry intelligence and embed it into their classrooms, creating relevant, authentic and innovative environments.”

Part of the session also included an interactive industry Q&A powered by GroupMap. “We wanted to lead by example, “ said Sweet, “and make the most of collaboration tools like GroupMap. It allows audience members to ask questions to presenters as they have them, engaging those that might not be comfortable asking questions in a large group forum. The workshop organizers could see any unanswered questions posed by the group on GroupMap and could respond to them. Teachers could see group brainstorming technology in practice making it easier to implement strategies to engage students in the classroom.”

Additional sessions included test running a new social media platform called FauxBook, insights into careers in business, finance, and technology from Microsoft and BankWest, and industry updates from a panel of industry speakers.

Ready to try your own critical thinking exercises?

Here are 5 tips to consider to help students become independent learners.

  1. Set examples that do not have a straightforward answer.These are your non-Google”able” items that challenge the student ability to examine perceptions, inferences and conclusions. “Which is better? Oranges or bananas?
  2. Start and end with “Why”.This is a clear sign that people are engaging in thinking.  A simple technique is to ask Why 5 times so you really drill down into the basic logic.
  3. Aren’t questions great?Learning stops at an answer and thinking starts with a question.  A Socratic style and deliberate questioning with the group will get those neurons firing.
  4. Engage in visual thinking.In this blog example, we used a 2 column list just to represent opposing views. Additional options such as Plus, Minus Interesting, 6 thinking hats, or a collaborative mind map provide different thinking activities. The use of space with graphic organizers helps to organize thoughts and to make it easier to see what the thinking is in the room.
  5. Give them time to think.Want to avoid that awkward silence when you ask a large group a question? Critical thinking exercises require a little introspection and processing time. Give people a chance to brainstorm individually first (yes, this is a feature in GroupMap).  They can then share more broadly and with confidence with the wider group.

If you would like to watch a quick critical thinking exercise in action, please watch the below video.

Judging software used to find the best student start ups

Just Start IT, an innovative learning program designed to ignite student creativity, is an 18-week inter-school program of student teams made up of Hackers, Hawkers, and Hipsters how to create a Technology Start-Up. GroupMap was used as the judging software solution for the night.

There were more than 200 teams participating in the program for 2015 from 32 different schools across Perth, Australia. The students were introduced to their mentors who helped them dive right into the process of creating a business that solves real-world problems. With their eyes on the finals; everyone was working together to build their solutions using the lean canvas template. It was exciting to see which problems the student start-ups were addressing and their incredible solutions.

The ten finalist student startups included :

Bit Transaction– an Escrow payment solution for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is like cash but for the internet, with the ability to revolutionize the payment industry. Bitcoin has sparked plenty of interest from many power figures including Al Gore, Peter Thiel, and Bill Gates. The problem for Bitcoin spenders is the security of not knowing if they would receive their purchase or not.

“We believe Bitcoins greatest potential is as a global payment network, by providing an escrow payment solution for bitcoin, we will change the way you pay online”.
– Aiden Gatani

CrapMap-Australia’s best locator is an application allowing the citizens of Perth the ability to report and review public toilets to the council for maintenance. Their application allows users to discover the cleanest, closest public toilets near you.

Dear Dad– creates different packs to deal with the awkward situation of father-daughter relationships when it comes to the conversations of puberty and relationships. They created a demo pack for the night and described a range of alternative Dear Dad spin-offs.

After months of sleepless nights and early mornings, the student startups pitched their ideas to a crowd of 200 and 9 judges who were all wanting to listen to the bright ideas from the youth in their community.

 

 

finalists for juding

The judges used GroupMap as a judging platform to provide feedback to each team and to rate their pitches on a scale based on how they sizzled or fizzled. As each student startup pitched their idea, each judge rated them directly on the judging platform, capturing comments and asking questions. Judges included Paul Hodder from Bell Potter, Tony Panetta from DataCom, Michelle Sanford from Microsoft, and Walter Green from Waitta/iAwards.

Here’s a snippet from one of the judges:

What the judges had to say

Judging was made easy and in real-time. Each student startup was entered directly into GroupMap as a judging software for the night. Each judge’s ranking was combined to give the overall scores and placement of the teams. The list would reorder itself according to the final ratings so that all the teams were ranked from 1 to 10. A team that sizzled meant that they had the right market, the right team and had validated their idea well. Judges simply used their mobile, laptop or table to rate their scores.

student start up business contest

The final winning team was Team Getcha – a social media application that solves the problem of receiving unwanted gifts by allowing you take photos of the things you want and allowing your friends to buy this for you. It blended business advertising, social media as part of this “wedding list” style application.

judging software used to rank winning team

The event organizers were provided with the final list of ranked participants as well as individual reports that could be shared with the student startups to provide them with feedback from the judging panel. The winning team was awarded a $5,000 cash prize and the top 2 teams were also given the opportunity to pitch their ideas at the national iAwards. Two other teams also took out the prizes for innovation.

Best of luck to each of the student teams as they head off on their entrepreneurial journey.
See what the organizers had to say below:

We created a GroupMap to use as judging software perfect to the needs of our evening, allowing our judges to listen to the pitches and rate the pitches by filling a toolbar. The judges were also able to enter valuable feedback that they could share with each other via the map throughout the evening. This allowed quick and silent collaboration that was vital to the process. GroupMap also creates feedback reports to us the program leaders to be able to take back to the teams after the event for discussion. This type of feedback for teams that we are taking to market is invaluable.

GroupMap is a fantastic collaboration tool that we want to build permanently into our program. It allows endless collaboration, giving even the most quiet person a voice. I think of GroupMap as The Voice of Collaboration, and could not recommend it more highly.

Lainey Weiser
Just Start It
Co-Founder

Graphic organizers used to explore future jobs with 200 students

As part of Careers Week, Ashdale Secondary College held a series of interactive activities and workshops focussed on careers – highlighting the skills and attributes students needed in the workplace. Using interactive technology to improve student engagement, students creatively imagined future jobs then voted for the “coolest”. Based on the top job, they then had to brainstorm online the skills, knowledge, and personal attributes necessary for that job. With such a neat idea, we had to share some of the graphic organizers they used. student engagement preparing for graphic organizers Lynne Makin from Ashdale Secondary College reiterated the great need for career guidance to be promoted and celebrated in local schools. “It’s important that we invest the time to support young people with advice and guidance which puts them on the right track to careers success at the earliest opportunity,” She said the initiative was about inspiring students to achieve their dreams and encouraging them to ask the right questions. The session kicked off with Co-Founder Jeremy Lu sharing his personal career journey, then asking students to imagine what jobs would exist in 2050.  Here’s the graphic organizer they used – a simple list used to capture the different kinds of jobs. From DNA based credit cards to Exo soldier to nuclear engineers, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of unique professions.

What jobs do you think will exist in 2050?

graphic organizer Students were then asked to consider and discuss the different ideas and to dot vote on the one that they thought was the job that would be the most creative and worth exploring further. As you can see, Food Printer topped the list. Seem off the radar? Perhaps not. In fact, talented Dutch industrial Chloe Rutzerveld is already exploring this space creating artistic portions of healthy based finger foods. edibel-growth-3d-printed-food-2 With the job of food printer in mind, a graphic organizer was created with the following 4 headings:

1. Skills – What they can do
2. Knowledge – Knowing why they do what they do
3. Experience – Time spent doing what they do
4. Attributes – Personal traits that decide how they do what they do

This was a great way to gather ideas from students about what was needed to secure those future jobs. As students completed their brainstorm online, these were shared in real time with everyone, including the teacher so that it could be used as a tool for facilitating discussions. It was really interesting to see where students struggled and where they were on the right track.

What skills, knowledge, experience and attribute do you need to be a Food Printer?

skills knowledge and experience graphic organizer for student brainstorming This information and discussion became the basis of the ensuing workshops aimed to hone those skills and knowledge. Industry mentors and representatives were invited to speak to share their experience, as well as some goal setting challenges for each student to consider what they could do to plan for their future career. This was a great scene setter and helped teach students the importance of building and creating your own future.

So what did the students think about this approach?

(Our thanks to the teachers who helped collect and send us this feedback)

“It was cool to see the ideas on the screen and amazing how the technology brought everyone together.”

“Very creative session and fun to work with others.”

“This session showed us how easy it was to use GroupMap to help us learn new things in a fun way.”

“It helped me relate to the task as technology is a big part of our lives.”

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If you are keen to create your own graphic organizers to improve student engagement in the classroom, you can try the above to run your own career exploration activities or check out more lesson plans. About the Author Vicki Hodgson is a business management Lecturer who previously worked within Education in the UK.  She has developed and delivered leadership and management programs at one of the UK’s foremost Further Education colleges. Vicki was nominated for two national enterprise awards in 2014 and won the academic staff member of the year in 2012.  She has continued her work with Curtin University and Edith Cowan University in Australia.