Critical Thinking
The core focus for kidCourses in 2012 and beyond will be Critical Thinking programs for kids (online and live courses). This section will be ever-expanding, so if you are interested in this topic, please check back often! Please feel free to contact us about these courses.
April Fools’ News [Coming soon as a LIVE course and an online course]
April Fools’ News is humorous adventure in Critical Thinking (& Critical Viewing) that incorporates shooting (HD video), scripted acting, improv, and both constructing and deconstructing a news piece slotted to “air” on the first of April. Participants take on one or more roles while bringing one producer’s “great idea” to do something “funny to the news“ to fruition. This program uses flexible scripts and flexible roles to accommodate varying group sizes. April Fools’ News was inspired (in part) by Parker & Moore’s college-level textbook entitled Critical Thinking, and talking points (argument from outrage, loaded questions, emotive force of words, etc) revolve around concepts found in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. We are eager to further develop this course centered aroud Media Literacy, Critical Thinking, Critical Viewing, and Visual Literacy. Clips from our test run are shown below. Points for discussion are listed at the end of this article. The Critical Thinking focus of this course is LOGICAL FALLACIES.
Logic Dogs [Current blog series; will be compiled into a “course” when the series is complete]
Logic Dogs comes in two sizes: Medium Breeds and Small Breeds. This is a fun intro to logic that revolves around two small dogs, Theodore and Bella. So far we have posted 2 versions of episode 1. Both videos are provided below, but for a Prezi version that you can control, please see the posts Episode 1 for Small Breeds (younger kids) and Episode 1 for Medium Breeds (older kids). We also posted Logic Dogs #1: A Quick Game. Stay tuned! Episode 2 is coming soon.
OWS and Critical Thinking: Teach Your Kids About Red Herrings and 9 Other Fallacies [Recent blog post]
We recently did a lengthy blog post on (you guessed it) OWS and Critical Thinking. Please read it here. The Logical Fallacies that are covered include: Ad Hominen, Straw Man, Argument from Outrage, Scare Tactic, Hasty Conclusions, Group Think, Red Herring, Wishful Thinking, Argument from Popularity, and Post Hoc. Please note that these are Parker & Moore’s TOP TEN FALLACIES of all time.
Don’t Fall for that Fallacy [Future blog series; will be compiled into a “course” when the series is complete]
This course will focus on dozens of fallacies.
Check out our Critical Thinking posts!