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00:00:03

Good morning, good afternoon or maybe good evening depending on uh your location. Please send an emoji if you see my screen right now. Uh so just to make this last uh and final test I also have my own puppet Miranda. It's not actually a puppet. This is Mr. Freeze. And Mr. Freeze is always a sign for my students that we need to slow down, take a breath in and out and maybe process and reflect what happened. So today uh I'm going to uh give you a glimpse of something critical. So critical thinking

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and actually everything that I will show you today is not only for your students. I hope you will use some of these ideas also for your reflection and for your life. not only professional. So my first question is, do you feel overwhelmed with the internet? Let me know in the chat. Yes. No. Or maybe you love it. Do you feel overwhelmed? No. Yes. Yes. Okay. Do you feel like in this abundance of information uh sometimes called pseudocience, new things, uh maybe some scams, something that is going viral, do you feel like

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you don't know who you should believe? If you said yes, welcome. We are in the same team. I also experience such feelings and not every now and then, I would say even more often. So today when we think about higher order thinking skills and critical thinking we I I think you all believe in the same thing as educators, teacher trainers and teachers that we want our students to be autonomous learners. Not only passive learners that just need to learn something to pass a test with flying colors, but additionally

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remember it and analyze and maybe use this knowledge, use this skill in the future to create something magnificent. So they become better human beings. They can find their passions. They can find their voice based on the subject or piece of information that they were taught by you. So when we think about higher order thinking skills, we want the students and us as well. That's why I told you this is something for you as well. We want to actually do something with it. So just to be a co-creator and

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today you are also co-creators of this 15 minutes and learning opportunity. That's why please be super active on the chat because I am sure that one way or the other you approach or even tried critical thinking without even knowing. So share your experiences and ideas because then we will have bunch of opportunities to create something new from. So you are co-creators asking you another thing. What do you see? Let me know in the chat. What's the first thing that comes to your mind? What can you see?

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A black. Okay. What's more? What else you see? Cot on hair, smoke. Wonderful. I love your ideas. Hot air balloon. A black hole. Okay. I ask you to show you something that is critical in critical thinking. So, frame of reference. When I will show you, and please look at me right now, not at this black thing that we were trying to describe. When I will show you my thumb, what direction am I pointing into? What are are you going to tell me? Right. Right. Okay. But when I switch the video and mirror it, you probably

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will write the opposite. Exactly. The question is, are we both and all right and correct? Yes, we are. Because everything depends on your perspective. So, everything depends on your frame of reference. When I look at the picture, let's get back to the presentation. I see a black hole because I'm a science geek. So I love universe and basically this is something that I'm absolutely just about. So simply speaking black hole is something that I will see at first. That's my frame of reference. And I I am

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showing you black hole because black hole has very specific function and quality. the quality of being a vacuum. I'm showing you this to help you understand that critical thinking doesn't happen in a vacuum. What it means, we simply cannot ask our students to think critically, analyze certain concepts, take bunch of information and then co-create something new if they do not have any prior knowledge. So we cannot push them and throw them into a vacuum. We need them to be able to understand and at least

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have a solid knowledge and basic elements of the topic. So then we can set a proper context and then we can sit down start to think like philosophers and cocreate analyze and come up with wonderful ideas. So prior knowledge is like your set of tools and then the context is your direction into which you are all turning into. Today we're not going to discuss the whole wonderful and much needed concept of Bloom's taxonomy uh which stands for uh a framework that basically can help us to classify learning objectives by

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our cognitive complexity i.e. It simply organizes all skills of of these six levels from simpliest to the most complex. In critical thinking and higher order thinking skills, we want our students to do something with the knowledge that they already have and step by step gradually we can add more components. We can add something controversial. We can add something that maybe is still uh misunderstood and so on. For instance, in language teaching, we can ask our students to first uh decide about the favorite persona in their book

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and then try to analyze what kind of person is that, why you like this character. Gradually moving on and on, we can also give students a safe space and this container for presenting opinions. It can only happen if your students know the story i.e. they have background knowledge, prior knowledge. You can ask your students to justify. So then they are not passive learners. They have this feeling. Oh my voice matters. Someone asked me, I am seen. I am heard. Additionally, uh we can ask them to create any kind of story that will be an

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alternative ending for them. Uh at the same time, we are showing students that creativity and something outside of the box, not only ABC answers is relevant and important. We focus on the process. Then however you might start thinking all right Blanca we are talking about critical thinking our minds certain approach mindset but where is the whole AI here we come AI is coming here because in general it's not only how we think um about certain ideas are they good wrong but also what we think h when we use AI

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as a kind of component We can help ourselves to manage cognitive load. We can make our lessons and sessions, thinking sessions as well. We can make them more interactive. At the same time, we have the whole world library next to us that we can use as valuable resources. Additionally, uh when we combine critical thinking in any kind of educational setting, it can help us to spot any gaps. Or maybe like with the rule of exit tickets, is there something you still don't understand? Maybe next session we need to focus on XY Z because

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it is relevant. Learning doesn't happen in a vacuum. So we make connections. This is how our memory works. Your brain simply speaking needs this signal. Hey, hey, hey. This is the piece of knowledge. You have to connect with something else. You already know. You've been there. You've done that. Otherwise, your memories will fade naturally. That's the function of our brain, which is good because I don't know how about you. I wouldn't like to go around with my head full of unnecessary, unuseful,

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and maybe even unproper pieces of knowledge and memories. AI can help us here to uh grasp additional perspectives. That's why I asked you about a black hole. Some of you wrote it's not a black hole, it's something else because we all do have different frame of reference. Famous activity and now we are getting into the moment when today maybe you can use everything that I will show you with your students or alone. One of famous method is socratic questioning. so famous, sociest uh I would say essential element of

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philosophy. Very often when we work with text uh during any kind of language class, we ask our students, can you tell me or can you elaborate on the author's idea? Well, if the author still is with us, we can simply chat, call, maybe send a message and ask what was the main purpose and idea in the text. However, if we work with the text that was written in 15th century, now our students are supposed to know what did the author mean. How about we create another space, safe space for our student to speculate.

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What if it's not only for language environment when you think about his story class, history classes, any historical events, second world war, what if? What if this country wasn't involved? What if someone invented a a magical tool that would XY Z? You can speculate. Additionally, if you are learning languages, it's a great opportunity for instance to uh incorporate certain grammar elements without students even knowing that they are learning grammar. In Socratic questioning, we can also

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consider how you know it's true. With the age of fake news and misinformation, how you really know? We all are guilty of thinking, "Oh, I heard that the American scientist said,"All right, but what they said, if they said something, is there any protocol? Is there any um metaanalysis for the given study?" Of course, we can multiply such examples. What I'm pointing out here to reflect for all of you is education as a business area as any other. It can also be a lobby and it

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certainly is. So some people are marketing certain products only to make money simply speaking. So how we really know is there any value is there any quality behind it? If we start showing this to our students that not everything that looks so so creative, so beautiful and so colorful might be a fact. We give them opportunity to stand out, use their voice and start thinking critically because what I believe in might not be the same for you very often. It's okay because we all have different frame of

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reference. Another idea you can use today or tomorrow is using AI. If you don't want to create this case study, please ask AI to create a certain story or maybe gather certain pieces of of information from all over the internet to start a debate. I chose the example of medicine, AI in medicine, threat on opportunity. So your students can identify the problem h and you create a very respectful framework for them to propose some solutions and maybe agree or disagree. Bonus idea you can ask chat

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GPT or any other tool you work with to uh to prove and to come up with certain arguments in a very specific role i.e. A different frame of reference for AI in medicine will come from a doctor. A patient might think completely differently and a policy maker might bring completely new argument to this discussion. So AI can be your researcher. Similar technique when you ask AI to generate a false argument. The earth is flat. All right. Everybody knows it's a fake of course. But if we start with

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this activity, of course remembering that language doesn't happen in a vacuum. You need your students to to be aware about the basic elements of this area. We can ask okay are there any sources that are showing us the opposite? Why such arguments were popular back then? What's the story behind it? How everything evolved? Because we know even when we think about 50 years ago in terms of science and neuroscience, we didn't have so great opportunity in using fMRI scans just to see what's really happening in our

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minds. So we have this um area for our students and ourselves that it's okay to change mindset. It's okay to follow up and adjust with everything because uh not only languages in general, the world is changing rapidly. Another technique for you pre-wise or uh some people might have heard about it uh with the name so what? So what three simple questions that you can adjust and change play around uh after your students provide certain answer or maybe with the AI because you can only blame AI for

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certain responses and give opportunity for your students to only think. You can ask why this piece of knowledge is important. Why we need to learn grammar? Why it's important? Are there any implications? Are there any outcomes we have to learn grammar? Or maybe there are some people that would disagree with this. What are the situations and who these people are? To wrap it up for you today. uh when you start incorporating higher order thinking skills, think and be brave to create a space for challenging

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questions, even controversial ones. Uh as long as you do it in a respectful way, giving the opportunity for students and you as well to be co-creators, you create a space for reflection and this nurturing environment. So your students would end up with having traumatic experiences because they were unable to present their opinion and being one in the whole classroom saying I disagree. I challenge you to start thinking uh in terms of AI as not our replacement. It's not going to replace us. This is

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what I can tell you for sure. That would be one of just few things that I'm sure including taxes. I'm sure that taxes won't disappear. So AI let it be your provocator. Let it help you to challenge everybody in the classroom. H let it not be ready to use tool that give you ready to use answers because AI is your waiter and you are a customer. So what you are going to order AI is going to deliver. Simply speaking, as I mentioned, AI will help you and your students to exaggerate that we all are different and we have

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endless frames of reference and that's good and errors are welcomed for the last thing to be said today because they are the gate to neuroplasticity. We need them. So, thank you very much.