HOW ENHANCE CRITICAL THINKING WITH TECHNOLOGY?

María José López Aguirre
Week 5: Critical Thinking and Technology
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This week article "Critical Thinking and Technology" was fairly interesting. It present information about how technology influence in many ways the critical thinking skills of learners. Something that caught my attention was the reasons why people learn. Intrinsic motivation play an important role in learning. Teachers need to recognize that students are most likely to become intellectually excited and motivated to work, when the learning objectives appeal to their attitudes and emotions as well as their ability to understand. Teachers also must be aware that people acquire knowledge naturally while trying to solve problems that concern them. Something I want to remember from this article is that knowledge comes from the ability to reason, understand, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate evidence rather than memorizing abstract information. Something that made me want to read more about was the information regarding to learning personalities, teachers should acknowledge that many people like visual input as opposed to auditory learning. For example, they like to learn and organize information inductively through experiences, and using visual aids such as pictures, diagrams, time lines or demonstrations in order to retain information easily. Technology offers teachers the opportunity to provide students a variety of visual resources in order to foster the ability to think critically and creatively, and benefit the acquisition of new knowledge.  Others prefer the speech or visual symbols of auditory information, such as written words or notations. Questions I still have are regarding about how technology can contribute to the critical thinking skill to those students that prefer auditory input. To conclude, teacher need to know their students learning personalities and stablish clear objectives for their learning before they decide if certain technologies can help them develop their ability to think critically and become active intellects.