Mobile Phone Wiki

I thought this was a great activity and well scaffolded using de Bono's Hats (1985).  What a marvelously freeing way of expressing all your thoughts on a subject along with your colleagues!  The large quantity and quality of comments in the wiki is testament to it's success as a scaffolding tool.

Negative  Process  Creative  Intuitive  Positive  Objective


The colour coded hats provide a means to look at a problem/idea from many different angles, promoting the idea of putting on another hat to think from another perspective.  This works best with a collaborative approach.  It is also a meta-cognitive approach using higher order thinking skills as you are encouraging thinking about thinking. The black hat symbolises judgment or negative reasons.  The blue hat symbolises the process - thinking about thinking.  The green hat sybolises creativity - what could be? The red hat signifies feelings.  The yellow hat symbolises brightness and positivity, good ideas and the white hat symbolises objectivity - the facts!

In this activity we needed to fill out a wiki table using de Bono's Hats (1985) on the subject of "Mobile Phones in the Classroom".  This elicited a wide ranging response under all the hats and gained a deep understanding of the issues from a diverse range of people's perspectives.  This is collaborative group work and uses the learning styles of contructivism  and also Learning Engagement theory.  Connectivism is also present as you must know where to source further information and research to support your ideas.  Cognitivism is strongly present also as this activity has a strong emphasis on thinking about your thinking.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed using de Bono's Hats and for the first time was really impressed with the use of a wiki as a learning tool in this setting.  Many learning theories were brought together to form a well rounded learning experience with individual and group work, collaboration,  higher order thinking skills, constructivism and connectivism.  A deeper understanding of the subject was gained and a deeper understanding of thinking proccesses was also achieved.  All in all, a worthwhile experience.  I can see many ways this could be incorporated into a classroom setting.