"Critical thinking is deciding rationally what to or what not to believe."
When I look at others and my own hypertext I find myself immediately making a judgment on the topic. Am I fully convinced that strippers deserve a fair wage? Our hypertexts debate controversial issues and often the issue is still up in the air. It is our own critical thinking after reviewing the hypertext whether we believe it or not.
"Critical thinking is the development of cohesive and logical reasoning patterns."
The layout of the site is one of the most important aspects of a hypertext. When I'm trying to write an essay, I normally do an outline to give myself a plan for the future. As in a debate, you don't want to be making a point and then get lost in your own words and ramble on without ever saying anything at all. This strategy actually works in the reverse for the author as the reader loses trust in the work. There needs to be reason and logic behind your thinking or else it doesn't mean anything.\
"...open-mindedness..."
I don't believe that there can ever be success without compromise. An author that writes simply to state and restate their own opinions without ever touching on any other versions of the story is certainly not thinking critically. You need to take a step back and carefully review the situation. Readers like to come up with their own opinions rather than have their thoughts inserted into their minds by a one-sided argument. It is more effective to remain neutral because then you are considered an unbiased source and are more likely to be taken seriously.
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5 comments:
i concur.
I completely agree about the amount of thinking that goes in to the layout of the website. When I used to view websites, I took for granted the way information was sorted and spread out. Taking the time to make the site navigatable, information, and coherant at the same time was probably the best way possible to figure out what I really wanted to say.
I really like your analysis of the first quote. I agree that the many of the issues debated over in the hypertexts are not solved by these hypertexts, and are still up in the air. Thus, we must use the hypertexts as a source to formulate our own opinion through critical thinking.
For the second quote, I believe that the creation of the hypertext itself required "cohesive and logical reasoning patterns" as we are forced to think differently than if we were writing a printable paper. By doing the hypertext first, our reasoning patterns were forced away from the traditional patterns used to create a formal essay.
I also really liked your analysis of "open-mindedness" as this was one of the key things stressed in the hypertexts. Especially in the first hypertext, we were forced to offer many different perspectives from all the people who might be affected by the issue being covered. This open-mindedness is what critical thinking is all about.
I'm not sure I agree that remaining neutral is always the best option. I thought that the first book we read for this class was incredibly powerful, and it certainly containted an obvious point of view. Nevertheless, the amount of statistical and factual information also stood out on its own.
I agree with you that we should think about what we believe after we have learned about topics from others. For example what do i think about free lance day laborers.
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