Process: Thinking Focus

Consider ways to share your understandings and thinking through the use of an e-scrapbook. When using electronic scrapbooking with students, encourage students to share the process they used to select, evaluate, and synthesize information. Although lists and explanations are fine, consider ways to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information.

How will you transform ideas and information into a form that can be conveyed electronically? What is the audience for the project?

E-scrapbooking allows creators to mull over issues and speculate on outcomes. These are important high level thinking skills. As you design assignments, consider synthesis. How can people learn from each other? Design activities where students come together to compare their experiences, debate issues, and/or come to con census.

Critical thinking is the ability to identify, interpret, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information.

• Structure an argument
• Judge the credibility
• Make a decision

There are many ways to express your thinking through e-scrapbooking. Explore the following areas of focus and thinking.

Analogy Focus
Focus on an analogy. How is something like something else?

• Writing Ideas: Start with an analogy. What are the key ideas of the analogy? How can the analogy be used in different ways (i.e., recipe for life, recipe for disaster, recipe for life)?
• Visualizing Ideas: What visuals represent this analogy? Could a map or other visual tools be used as part of the analogy?
• Examples:
  "A library media center is like a tide pool."
  "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record - while, on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the bank." - Will Durant from The Story of Civilization

Before and After (Then and Now) Focus
Focus on before and after. How can a single event change your life or the life of others? How do things evolve over time?

• Writing Ideas: Start with an event, person, location, or other action. What was the world like before and after this happening? For example, before and after a volcano, hurricane or other disaster. What about before and after a war, medical breakthrough, or scientific discovery? What about before and after 911? What does a place look like before and after you plant a garden or build a house? What about before and after a volcano or flood? How does the environment change? Use Jan Thornhill's book Before & After: A Book of Nature Timescapes for ideas!
• Visualizing Ideas: What visuals represent before and after? What about the process that moved from before to after? For example, the process of a science experiment.
• Lessons:
  • Child Labor in America (Grades 7-12) from Library of Congress
  • Immigration: There's No Place Like Home from Library of Congress
  • To Market, To Market (Grade 11) from Library of Congress
  • When Work is Done (Grade 11) from Library of Congress
• Examples: park clean-up

Cause and Effect Focus
Focus on cause and effect.

• Writing Ideas:
• Visualizing Ideas:
• Examples: War, why leaves change colors, why medicine works
• Lessons: What Do You See? (Grade 11) from Library of Congress - Civil War and Industrial Revolution

Change Focus
Focus on a specific change. How do trees change from season to season? How have animals adapted to their environment? How do creatures change during their lives? How has a town changed over it's history? How has the health of a river changed over time? How has currency and coins changed in your lifetime? What about payment for goods and services (i.e., paypal, credit cards, debit cards, bar codes, money, checks, bartering)? What about stamps and letter writing? What about communications (i.e., cell phones, phone numbers, telephones, telegraphs)? Use Lynne Cherry's book A River Ran Wild for ideas.

• Writing Ideas: How are you connected with a historical figure, location, or event? How are you connected with particular ideas, concept or approach? How do you fit into the history of this idea? How is your local community connected to an historical event?
• Visualizing Ideas: What photos help you visually trace is idea or event?
• Examples: pollution in a river over time
• Synthesis: Compare different types of change. How is the season of a tree like the season of life? How is the life cycle of a bee like an ant? Compare currency across cultures.

Connection Focus
Focus on a particular connection between ideas or events. Trace the historical connection of these ideas. What's the history of the park you are visiting? How are you connected to the founders of your town or nation? Connect something in your life to a piece of music or artwork.

• Writing Ideas: How are you connected with a historical figure, location, or event? How are you connected with particular ideas, concept or approach? How do you fit into the history of this idea? How is your local community connected to an historical event?
• Visualizing Ideas: What photos help you visually trace is idea or event?
• Examples: Salem founder distant relative, ice cream family tradition, underground railroad, vanGogh and fields
• Approaches: Venn diagram, Chain of ideas (i.e., inventions, food chain), Los Alamos Fire, Milestones Project (see the cover from the book on the right)

Comparison Focus
Focus on a comparison. Consider comparing time periods, people, resources, or other things or ideas. Compare two articles from different points of view, two time periods, different versions of a document (Declaration of Independence), or different accounts of the same event.

• Writing Ideas:
• Visualizing Ideas:
• Examples: Photograph then and now (Kinnicks)
• Lessons:To Market, To Market from Library of Congress

Criticism Focus
Focus on criticism. Criticism involves a view or opinion on a particular work. Conduct a serious examination of a movie, book, play, essay, novel, scientific theory, short story, historical account, piece of art, music, or other work. Evaluate a work of art or literature. Make a judgment.

• Writing Ideas: What meaning do you find in this work? What do you like and dislike? Why? Provide examples and evidence to support your opinion. What is your judgment?
• Visualizing Ideas: What excerpts illustrate your ideas? Could you incorporate book or magazine covers, playbills, movie screen shots, author photographs?
• Examples: literary criticism

Debate Focus
Focus on a debate. Explore two sides of a topic and create a e-scrapbook debate.

• Writing Ideas: What is the central question or statement? What are the different sides of the issue? What are the key differences? Why?
• Visualizing Ideas: Can you identify an icon to depict each side and the key issues?
• Examples: Tobacco, Lumbering, Abortion, Patriot Act

In-depth Focus
Focus on the details and a close-up view on a topic. Zoom in on the essential elements of an idea.

• Writing Ideas: What did you find? What did you discovery that you didn't know before? What surprised you?
• Visualizing Ideas:
• Examples: Backyard Detective by Nic Bishop

Inquiry Focus
Focus on inquiry. Search for knowledge, answer questions, and investigate interests

• Writing Ideas: What are your questions about a topic? How can they be answered? How will you collect and analyze information?
• Visualizing Ideas: What tools did you use for thinking such as concept maps, lists, or diagrams?
• Examples: Blogs to record an experience, science experiments, science fair central

Mystery Focus
Focus on a mystery. A mystery is something that is difficult to explain or understand. Begin with a topic of interest. Create, document, and/or solve a problem, crime, incident, or puzzle surrounding a topic using deductive reasoning. Trace your inferences.

• Writing Ideas: What is the mystery surrounding your topic? What details are important in understanding and solving the mystery?
• Visualizing Ideas:
• Examples: Global warming; invasive species; Internet; diabetes
• Websites: 42explore: Mystery ; 42explore: Disaster, Catastrophe, & Calamity; 42explore: Mysterious & Unexplained
  

Perspectives Focus
Focus on an issue, argument, evidence, conclusions. Think about a particular perspective or point for view. Or, explore many different perspectives. Consider taking a different perspective than your own.

• Writing Ideas: What are all the perspectives that are represented? What are the key issues or points? What are the characteristics of people that hold a particular view?
• Visualizing Ideas: What photographs reflect each perspective? What documents support a particular view? Start with a photo. Write from the point-of-view of a person in the photo. Click on a photo to see of hear their perspective.
• Examples: Pro-War vs Anti-War; Republication vs Democrats; Rainforest Environment vs Industry; What happened to the Loyalists who went to Canada after the Revolutionary War?
• Synthesis: Hold a debate. Make a decision.

Prediction Focus
Focus on prediction. Prediction is a statement about the future based on evidence. It may involve anticipation, foretelling, and forecasting. When will a major earthquake hit the US midwest? When will Mount Hood erupt? When will the Amazon rainforests be gone and what will the impact be? When will diabetes be cured? Will the groundhog see its shadow? When will the garden bloom or the leaves change? What celebrities will get married and divorced? What will you be doing in 10, 20, or 50 years? What are your hopes and expectations? What would have happened if a different direction had been taken?

• Writing Ideas: What does the future hold? How do you know? What evidence supports your prediction? What's the past, present, and future of your idea? What do other people think about your prediction?
• Visualizing Ideas: What photographs reflect the past, present, and future? What are the key statistics used in making a prediction? What charts and graphs could be extended based on your evidence? What data could you collect to make your own graph? What objects, settings, or people are associated with the idea?
• Examples: Global warming; invasive species; Internet; diabetes; Days of Destiny edited by James McPherson (see book cover on right)
• Synthesis: Compare predictions. Refine predictions.

Process Focus
Focus on a process such as information or scientific inquiry, taking a trip, or finding a job. Also, consider topics that involve sequencing or timelines.

• Writing Ideas: What are the steps in the process? Are they stages or phases? Is the process recursive? How did your thinking change during the process? What were the major barriers or frustrations? What did you find exciting about the experience?
• Visualizing Ideas: What preparation or materials are involved? What visuals represent each stage of the process?
• Examples: Blogs to record an experience, from farm to table, life cycles

Product Focus
Focus on a product. Consider how technology can be used to transform this into an e-scrapbook projects. For example, you might create electronic squares like quilt squares to represent. Consider key historical events, people, scientific discoveries, disasters, and medical breakthroughs.

• Writing Ideas: What traditional products could be adapted for use in an e-scrapbooking project? For example, could you create a bumper sticker and use it as the center of your e-scrapbook page?
• Visualizing Ideas: Use traditional products to inspire your e-scrapbooking project.
• Examples: movie poster, trading cards, brochure

Reflection Focus
Focus on reflection. Consider how these new ideas fit into you experiences.

• Writing Ideas: What did I learn? How does it fit? What does it mean?

Storytelling Focus
Focus on storytelling.

• Writing Ideas: Who is telling the story, why? What happened? Who are the people involved? Is the story true?
• Examples: Quahog Family

Trace or Track Focus
Focus on tracing or tracking an idea, experience, or project.

• Writing Ideas: Track the weather in your area for a period of time. Calculate averages and make predictions.

Wonder Focus
Focus on wondering. Ask questions, consider connections, and explore options. Mark Kinnick is in the photo on the right from the 1840s. What do you think her life was like? What about her parents, children and grandchildren? What would they experience in their lifetimes? What did she think of having her photograph taken?

• Examples: Woman's Suffrage, The Branding of America
• IN Standards: The Victory Garden by Lee Kockenderfer

Resources

• Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking by Browne & Keeley
• Critical Thinking: An Introduction by Fisher

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