Using De Bonos' Hats to consider the use of mobile phones in the classroom.

The class Wiki topic was The Use of Mobile Phones in the Classroom. This topic is great for the use of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats. The class was divided into six groups and each group was given a hat. Our group was assigned the red hat. We discussed our feelings about mobile phones in the classroom, what we liked about it and what we didn't like about it. Monique typed the comments into the class wiki as we discussed them. The more we brainstormed the more the ideas began to flow. We researched the topic and came up with other perspectives that we had not considered. With the data entered we were feeling quite proud of our contribution...  but alas...
The data we entered was lost once another group saved their data, then their data was lost when another group saved their data and on it went. Now don't despair, there are always lessons to learn even when things go wrong.

Lesson one: When you go into the wiki, what is on the site when you click 'Edit'  and your contribution will be what is saved when you finish. In other words if several people are entering data at the same time then it will only be the last person to save whose data will be displayed.  Solution: ensure you enter data one at a time and save before the next person adds their work. Also it may be a good idea to put your data in a word document so if it is lost then you aren't back to square one.

Lesson two: The concept of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats was a great choice for this topic.  The group with the black hat had to think about the negatives even if they personally didn't feel there were any and the opposite applied for the white hat group. This strategy could be used by groups or individually and it would be beneficial to ensure that in a class, different learners were assigned different coloured hats each time to  develop their higher- order thinking skills. To have to consider a topic from a perspective different to your personal opinion is of far greater benefit than always being the positive one or the negative one in the group.

In the classroom  students could be encouraged to use the thinking hats when problem solving or the concept of the hats could be used by the teacher to reference a specific skill a student demonstrates. For example if a student puts forward a new idea or shows creativity, the teacher could say "I see you are thinking with your green hat today." Or if the teacher wants a different perspective on a topic, the teacher could ask students to use their black hats.

See the link below for a PowerPoint presentation for students to help them understand De Bono's Six Thinking Hats.  Learning Managers could develop something similar for their own class.

De Bono's Hats for Kids