A Thinking Hat For Every Occassion

I enjoyed participating in the Mobile phone wiki activity . 

I have to be honest and say that before this course I had never heard of a wiki. I’m very surprised at this as I have 4 children.  My two older ones are in their mid to late 20’s so wiki’s probably weren’t part of their learning experience. I have an 11 year old daughter and when I asked her she hadn’t heard of them either. I must admit that the majority of my pre- thinking about mobile phones in the classroom was from the BLACK HAT perspective. This can be attributed to my schema

Schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful, because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting a vast amount of information. However, these mental frameworks also cause us to exclude some important information in favour of information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. Schemas can contribute to stereotypes and make it difficult to retain new information which does not conform to our established schemas.

Once I participated in the wiki with the de Bono hats being used as a scaffolding tool I saw other perspectives. I’ve also begun using an iphone myself and my eyes have been opened up to what an incredibly diverse and interactive piece of communication technology the iphone is.

As an introduction to help understand why de Bono’s thinking hats are such a useful scaffold tool to encourage constructivist learning I will start with an overview of de Bono’s Six Thinking Hat Technique.

The Six Thinking Hats technique of Edward de Bono is a model that can be used for exploring different perspectives towards a complex situation or challenge.  Seeing things in various ways is often a good idea in strategy formation or complex decision-making processes.

The hats are a tool to scaffold the learners into thinking about a situation or problem from a range of different perspectives it also provides a means for groups to think together more effectively, and a means to plan thinking processes in a detailed but yet diverse way.
Scaffolding learning is extremely important for maximum learning experience.

Vygotsky believed that when a student is at the Zone of Proximal Development for a particular task, providing the appropriate assistance (scaffolding) will give the student enough of a "boost" to achieve the task. Once the student, with the benefit of scaffolding, masters the task, the scaffolding can then be removed and the student will then be able to complete the task again on his own.

The Hats are different colors representing different perspectives. This  short clip explains the perspectives.

BLUE HAT – A managing hat, control mechanism that ensures guidelines are observed.

GREEN HAT – Focuses on creativity, the possibilities, the alternatives and new ideas. New concepts and new perceptions.

YELLOW HAT= Brightness and optimism. Positives, values and benefits.   

BLACK HAT – Judgement, devils advocate or why something might not work. It will spot the dangers.

WHITE HAT = Just the facts. Information known or needed.

RED HAT – Feelings, hunches, intuition, dislikes, loves and hates