1. Beyond Hardware – Chapter 1 Premise 2 Thinking Skills By Tina Walker EDTC 5301 Dr. Berning

2. Premise 2 Computers promote improved thinking skills. Truism, Untested Assumption, or Myth?

3. Why even discuss this topic? Students must be able to utilize a variety of thought processes in the complex and dynamic working environment of the current millennium. Higher-level thinking skills are necessary to adjust to rapid technological changes.

4. What’s needed to accomplish this? A curriculum that focuses on problem solving, the application and integration of knowledge and higher- level thinking skills, opportunities for active learning, and learning measured in terms of a student’s ability to learn.

5. What does the research say? POSITIVE POINTS –Students would be able to solve open-ended problems more appropriately if they used technology based tools…(Oliver, 1999) NEGATIVE POINTS –Only a modest number of computer-using educators were identified as exemplary in their use of technology…(Becker, 1994) –Oliver’s findings did not support his hypothesis

6. Why did Oliver’s finding fail to support his hypothesis? Students’ lack of strategic understanding for why tool use was necessary Difficulty with the problem-solving process Inconsistency with organizing, evaluating, generating, and justifying their ideas

7. Statistics 9% of the total number of computer-using educators surveyed employed complex thinking skill strategies when using computers in the classroom. (Becker, 1994) Approximately 14% of the teachers surveyed reported using computers to promote higher-order thinking skills associated with challenging performance tasks and authentic learning opportunities.

8. What was missing? The students’ ability to make connections between the technology application and its practical use in meaningful complex thinking skill situations. They learned the application, but not when to apply it to real problems.

9. Do computers promote improved thinking skills? Until educational practitioners reconceptualize these technology- based tools for what they are as opposed to what they are not, using computers to help students develop higher-order thinking processes may never take place.

10. Premise 2 Truism, Untested Assumption, or Myth? Until more empirical research is provided, this could still be considered to be an untested assumption.