Professional development for Theory of Knowledge teachers? February 6 is the last day for signing up for the current iteration of the course Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens. It’s an online course offered on coursera.org. It can be done fairly inexpensively for credit or audited for free (presumably without the February 6 sign-up). Me, I’ve cruised through its outline and […]
Read more I’m taking a little holiday from watching the news. I do this sometimes. I turn off the volume to watch all those mouths move, then let all of the frustrated and angry people float away, sealed in their lovely bubbles. Escapism? Yes – and no. Sometimes it’s the only way to imagine myself outside my […]
Read more A storm of controversy over a swimming suit? Astonishingly, it’s not even a risqué one! Women have recently been fined in France for keeping too much of their bodies covered on the beach – and towns have passed regional laws to ban the “burkini”. The ban on this bathing costume, however, has met extensive […]
Read more At first glance, this three-minute video ( 6 Photographers Capture Same Person But Results Vary Widely Because of a Twist ) provides a visually engaging, if rather obvious, illustration of differing perspectives at work as 6 photographers take distinctly unlike pictures of the same subject. Taken at face value, it’s an appealing resource for a TOK class on the effect of what we think (perspectives, WOK intuition/reason) on […]
Read more Word of the day: gullible. Definition: easily duped or cheated, quick to believe something that is not true. In this last of four posts on scams and the “confidence game”, I’d like to close with activities and discussion for students aimed at reducing their gullibility and augmenting (I hope) their skills of critical thinking. The […]
Read more Words map our concepts. They affect how we think within our personal knowledge, and how we shape and exchange our shared knowledge. In any critical examination of the creation and flow of knowledge, we need to be aware of the influence of the terminology we use. Do you accept the knowledge claims above? If […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK ) Who needs critical thinking when we have Google? A team of computer scientists working for Google has proposed an improvement on what comes up when we enter our terms in its search window. They suggest a method of calculating a “trustworthiness score” for webpages based on their factual content: “We call […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK ) Yes, of course, we do know that people perceive colours differently. But so very differently? The dress at the centre of this week’s media storm makes an entertaining example in TOK of variability in sense perception, interpretation of optical illusion, and the extreme edge of “shared knowledge” – knowledge claims not shared […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) If there’s one quality we all want in news announcers it is their truthfulness. A liar is not what we want. It’s not surprising, then, that one of the most widely covered news stories of recent weeks is the one directed at exposing famous NBC News “anchorman” Brian Williams–as a liar. […]
Read moreIn the final post in this short series on the psychology of celebrity, Dr Jane McGee looks at whether fictional characters can truly be celebrities, and concludes that celebrity is nothing without its audience. Psychologists also debate whether fictional characters such as Harry Potter, Mickey Mouse or Pepper Pig can ever be considered celebrities since […]
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