Month: January 2012

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Howard Rheingold: Critical Thinking vs. Information Literacy

Advanced Cyber/IO
Howard Rheingold

Is There a Difference Between Critical Thinking and Information Literacy?

John M Weiner

Abstract

This paper investigates the similarities and differences between two important ideas in information processing and knowledge utilisation. Those ideas are [critical thinking] and [information literacy].  The two phrases are shown in brackets to indicate that the two words involved in each idea are not arbitrarily combined but have been coupled by authors to represent a single entity or a focus for development of concepts describing the characteristics involved. By exploring terms related to this couplet from the same sentence, the meaning of each of the central ideas can be expanded.  The education, library science, and health science literature were used in this study, which analysed 8745 articles dealing with [critical thinking] and 8201 reports dealing with [information literacy] included in either ERIC or PubMed from 2000-2009.

The findings showed that combinations of terms (i.e. ideas) such as [information & literacy & related term] or [critical & thinking & related term], when organised based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning (Bloom 1956), clarified the similarities and differences between the two central ideas. [Information literacy] was involved in all of the cognitive functions suggested by Bloom. This finding is consistent with the definitions of [information literacy] that relate it to lifelong learning and effective decision-making. In addition, the ideas describing [information literacy] were consistent with actions and perceptions that were more public and standardised than those associated with [critical thinking].

This suggests that [information literacy] and its associated procedures could significantly augment current instruction in [critical thinking] and indeed, the possibility has been explored by some authors in the current literature. A merging of the two ideas would involve [information literacy] providing tools and techniques in the processing and utilisation of knowledge and [critical thinking] supplying the particulars and interpretations associated with a specific discipline. This type of integration could lead to instructional programs similar in concept and application to those in research methodology where methods from statistics are integrated with the techniques and skills associated with a specific discipline. The development of a curriculum of this type would change functions and perceptions from private, individualised mentation, now associated with [critical thinking], to a more easily learned and practiced process suitable across the breadth of disciplines.

Keywords

critical thinking; information literacy; idea analysis

Full Text: PDF

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Venessa Miemis: Reflection – The Concept of Enlightenment

Uncategorized
Venessa Miemis

Reflection: The Concept of Enlightenment

musings on Adorno & Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.

When I review these passages, my mind speaks back – “the machine is using us”.The goal of the enlightenment was to free our minds, by favoring ‘rationality’ over myth and mysticism. Nature became something that was to be controlled by us, quantified, compartmentalized, labeled, manipulated.

But, this new scientific way of looking at things changed the way we THINK… or perhaps limited our ability to think at all. Instead of looking for greater ‘Truth’ or deeper meaning in things, identifying the essence of a thing, giving it ‘value’, it becomes a mere definition. The framework of thoughts are based in a soul-deadening logic and mechanicality. Everything that can be named and described and explained away can be somehow controlled, and there’s a power in that, but at the same time, something sacred is lost.

Click on Image to Enlarge

The belief in positivism seems as irrational to me as mythology must have been for those that started the enlightenment movement. To place utmost value in what the senses can perceive, and call it Truth, is ridiculous. I think we’re finally coming around full circle, not to a return to mysticism, but at least allowing ourselves to say that there’s more to life than meets the eye. In some ways, science itself has pointed out its fallibility. The more we dive into quantum mechanics, the more incongruities and incompatibilities we find with what we think we know and what is. Perhaps there really is an unknowable universal. Is it really such a horrible thing to have a sense of awe of the world around us??

We become like slaves in invisible chains, our minds shaped into the pattern of a machine: efficient, mechanical, repetitive, causal, our thoughts on the conveyor belt of an assembly line – there are no alternative paths for them to take.

This machine-like way of thinking is tied directly to the division of labor – the mechanized process of thinking is merely a function of material production and the “all-encompassing economic apparatus”. By abandoning the cumbersomeness of formulating actual thoughts in favor of following a predetermined reified path, the greater machine/system of society can operate smoothly. At the same time, the smooth operation leads to a distillation of society, a loss of culture.

By treating nature as something outside of oneself, something that needs to be manipulated and controlled verse something with which to be in harmony, humans become isolated and estranged. Both the lowly worker and the ones in charge are victims – the dominated are resigned sheep, and the dominators are equally immobilized by their distance from the experience, the self imposed detachment and repression of novelty in favor of utility in order to ‘better’ perform their role of power.

(from the archives; friday february 6, 2009; media studies graduate paper)
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Event: 18-20 June Games for Change [Submit by 17 Feb]

Games Serious / Change

The 9th Annual Games for Change Festival will be taking place on June 18-20, 2012. The call for talks and presentations is now live! The Festival is the leading global event that facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts.

To submit a talk or presentation, visit:
http://www.jotform.com/form/13345329628

Submission deadline: Friday, February 17 at 11:59 pm EST.

Accepted speakers will receive a complimentary pass to the Festival and will be notified on March 16.

To learn more about what topics we're looking for this year as well as information about the review process, visit out website:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/2012/01/g4c-12-call-for-talks-presentations/

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Robert Steele: Slate and New America Foundation a Propaganda Front – Taking Money Under the Table?

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Media, Non-Governmental
Robert David STEELE Vivas

Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories

Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs? 

By |Posted Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, at 7:43 AM ET

In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened—but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles—with no or little quality control.

Such democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

Read full article.

Robert Steele:  I am disengaged from Phi Beta Iota most of the time, but this piece was brought to my attention with the observation that it combines a claim to legitimacy involving Stanford University and Foreign Policy (no longer a serious rag, now a sub-set of secrecy & rendition apologist The Washington Post), and that it appears to be an early shot in a new national security propaganda theme aimed as neutralizing the use of the Internet for self-education.  When Obama said in the State of the Union that it is known kids do better when they are forced to stay in school until graduation, I was sharply critical–the reality is that the best and the brightest leave school as soon as they can pass the GED, realizing that rote learning of old knowledge from poorly-paid burn-outs is not the way to “jack in.”  What we have here is a very troubling indicator that the New America Foundation (wittingly) and Slate (perhaps unwittingly) are now part of the domestic propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex.  The idiocy and illegitimacy of this piece should not have to be pointed out, but since Slate, which I thought had educated leadership, evidently saw nothing wrong with this piece, I will just point them to several books that will explain to them why collective intelligence, open source everything, and the three values of clarity, diversity, and integrity, are all essential to resilience and sustainability.  Transparency, truth, and trust are the heart of the matter.  This article is a disgrace to Slate and to Stanford, and confirms my growing disdain for the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy.

Robert David Steele, The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, 2012)

David Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room (Basic, 2012)

Robert David Steele, Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (Earth Intelligence Network, 2010)

Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (Earth Intelligence Network, 2008)

David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Holt, 2008)

and then of course there are all the other books that in the aggregate would suggest to any intelligent reader that Slate has just published the biggest piece of crap in the recent history of digital journalism.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

2012-01-28  Berto Jongmanprovides link to:

Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories

Phi Beta Iota:  The puported article is totally inept, using students and a very narrow range of information provided to the students to attempt to replicate a much more nuanced and comprehensive range of networks with access to vaster information resources.  The article also does not provide for new sources coming into the public domain, with the inevitable result that the truth ultimately comes out, for example, on the JFK and MLK assassinations, the USS Liberty, and increasingly, 9/11 as a mix of let it happen, make it happen, and cover it up.

Lead Author Responds:

Thanks for your interest in the SPPS article. In response to your queries in the linked blog post, we didn't seek to inform people about particular theories in any great detail, to provide a model of the broader communities which advocates conspiracy as an explanation for world events, or to model opinion change as new information is presented. While those are interesting topics and we certainly hope to examine them in some detail in the future, they are beyond the scope of this rather small study, in which we attempted to extend previous work on correlations in beliefs between different conspiracy theories and examine the source of that correlation through multiple regression analysis of some novel data. As such we pass no judgement on the truth or falsity of any of the theories discussed; while the media may attempt to spin the study as “those crazy conspiracy theorists!”, be assured that this wasn't our intention, and in the paper itself we make the point that apparent contradictory belief is probably present in many different contexts, populations, and ideologies, rather than unique to people who hold particular opinions about geopolitics.

Yours,

Michael Wood

Ph.D. Candidate & Associate Lecturer, School of Psychology
Keynes College, University of Kent
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Jim Fetzer: New Evidence Oswald Was In The Doorway

07 Other Atrocities
Jim Fetzer

JFK Special: Oswald was in the Doorway, after all!

EXTRACT:

In JFK: What We Know Now That We Didn’t Know Then (Veterans Today, 21 November 2011), Dr. James H. Fetzer provides a valuable summation of recent advances in JFK assassination research, including the discovery of the written notes of Detective Will Fritz concerning Oswald’s whereabouts during the shooting, as mentioned above. That Oswald told Fritz that he was “out in front with Bill Shelley” contravenes the established belief that he said he was in the lunchroom, where he was shortly before and would be confronted shortly after. Here are those notes:

. . . . . .

The Demise of the “Lone Nut” Theory

In conclusion, even though a lot of manipulation went into transforming Oswald into Lovelady, it didn’t work. We can still tell that it’s him, Oswald–and I would bet my life on it. The preponderance of the evidence is overwhelming, and the meager challenges to it are riddled with suspicion and doubt. The worst thing that ever happened to the JFK research community was relinquishing Doorway Man.

We need to take him back. We need to add the Altgens photo to the list of physical evidence that the conspirators altered and corrupted. We need to shout from the rooftops that Oswald could not have killed Kennedy because he was standing outside in front of the building at the time. This settles it. This ends it. This is checkmate for THE WARREN REPORT (1964).

The cover-up of the murder of President Kennedy, by our government and our media, has been going on for 48 years, and it must stop. It has been poisoning us as a people, that is, our society and our culture. To heal, to recover, and to start anew, we need to know the truth.

See Also:

Rules of Logic and Probability: Thinking About Conspiracy

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David Swanson: Military Spending Going UP Not Down

Uncategorized
David Swanson

Panetta: Military Spending Is Going Up

By David Swanson

On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he called “cuts” to military spending.  The first question following his remarks pointed out that the “cuts” are to dream budgets, while the actual spending will be increased over Panetta's 10-year plan.

Is there any year, the reporter asked, out of the 10 years in question, other than the first one, 2013, in which spending will actually decrease at all.  Panetta replied that he was proposing really truly to cut the projected dream budgets that he had hoped for.  In other words, he did not answer the question.

Now, there are additional minor cuts “on the table” as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cut nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors.  (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.)  Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts.  They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.

The video (available here) is itself packed with lies.

Continue reading “David Swanson: Military Spending Going UP Not Down”