ideabuffet

Thinking About (Faulty) Thinking

No ones likes to be tricked. Having someone pull the wool over our eyes is embarassing and potentially harmful. Yet, how often do we arm our students with the cognitive tools to chip away at incorrect logic or obfuscations? My guess is (in the rush to prepare for standardized testing) that we probably don'tconsistently explain to our pupils about how incorrect lines of reasoning can sometimes appear plausible until we dig a little deeper. To better arm people for a battle of wits, Stephen Downes has created a collection of Logical Fallacies. It might be interesting to ask students to use the resource to clarify the actions and thoughts of a character in a book or a local political leader.

Home Ec Tech

I know, I know: nowadays it's called Family and Consumer Science, not Home Ec. However, when I found the entire 1881 edition of Household Cyclopedia, a nifty almanac describing how to run a Victorian era home, I thought to myself, "Hmmm, cool!. This would be a very technology integrated means of comparing and contrasting life today and life with daily life as it was lived over a hundred years ago. Doing this would demonstrate how some daily household tasks have changed, how others have remained pretty much the same, and how some are in transition. Hmmm, the students may need a Venn Diagram to do that, though." I'm pretty sure students would find this type of thing engaging, could relate it to their own life, and could see extensions for it beyond the classroom. What do you think? Is this too pie in the sky?