1. Using Blogs to Develop Critical Thinking Skills Brick & Click Northwest Missouri State University Ericka A. Raber University of Iowa

2. Inspirations “I Need Three Peer Reviewed Articles…” Farkas Beyond Peer-Reviewed Articles: Using Blogs to Enrich Students’ Understanding of Scholarly Work (Deitering and Gronemyer) Inquiry-based learning (Stripling) Miniature Guide to CT (Paul and Elder)

4. http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-in-every-domain-of- knowledge-and-belief/698

5. Why Blogs? No peer-reviewed stamp of approval Short, often fun Arguments Rich selection Provide context for activities Critical Thinking Library Instruction

6. Engaging blogs but not serious

7. Guiding Ideas Critical thinking – is a habit of the mind (attitudes, dispositions) – is supported by community – involves questioning Less is more Context is key Students should be working harder than you are.

8. Globalization and Social Change

9. In-Class Worksheet While reading your text think about: – What claims are being made? How are the claims supported? What do you want to learn? How can you learn more? Where might the conversations be taking place? Related to your text/topic, identify: – Keywords and concepts, Contacts, Sources/Studies

10. Instruction Sessions One-shots – Model thinking/search strategies – Have students pose questions for a text related to their topic – Discuss next steps (where to look) One-shots+ – Coordinate longer activity with instructor (use blog from class)

11. Finding Blogs http://www.google.com/blogsearch http://researchblogging.org http://academicblogs.org

12. Future Directions Semester-long course: Personal Learning Network Assignment, Howard Rheingold (@hrheingold); managing info tasks@hrheingold Work with Grad Students—blogs, #conference, network creation and curation

13. Your thoughts? Materials at: http://tinyurl.com/9vztplghttp://tinyurl.com/9vztplg Contact me: ericka-raber@uiowa.edu