Alternative Professional Development

Robin Good: Critical thinking is a key strategic skill needed by any serious professional curator. 

 

"Critical thinking provides the keys for our own intellectual independence..." and it helps to move away from "rashy conclusions, mystification and reluctance to question received wisdom, authority and tradition" while learning how to adopt "intellectual discipline" and a way to express clearly ideas while taking personal responsibility for them.

 

Key takeaways from this video:

 

Critical thinking refers to a diverse range of intellectual skills and activities concerned with "evaluating information" as well as our own thought in a disciplined way.
  Critical thinking is not just thinking a lot. To be an effective critical thinker you need to seek out and be guided by "knowledge" and "evidence" that fits with reality even if it refutes what the general consensus may want to believe.
  Critical thinkers cultivate an attitude of curiosity and they are willing to do the work required to keep themselves informed about a subject.
  Critical thinkers do not take claims at face value but utilize scepticism and doubt to suspend judgement and objectively evaluate with facts the claims being made.
  Critical thinkers should evaluate information on the basis of reasoning and not by relying on emotions as claims the factuality of a claim cannot be solely based on the level of emotion that accompanies them or the fact that they may be believed by certain groups.

 

Highly recommended for all curators. 9/10

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OLPL5p0fMg 

 

Via Robin Good

This piece is from Martin Geysler's collection - Social Media What We Think About it.

 

Excerpt:

 

If you subscribe to a lot of blogs and invest time in sharing useful content with your audience this workflow will help you streamline your process.

 

 

One of the most powerful dynamics of social media is the democratization of information. The more you can read, learn and share, the more value you should be able to extract from various digital channels.

 

Tapping into Web 2.0 to stay educated and informed is a labour intensive proposition.

 

**The tools are free but your time comes at a cost, so the more efficiently you can mange the process the better.

 

**If you subscribe to a lot of blogs (and other RSS feeds) and invest time in sharing useful content with your audience this workflow will help you streamline the process.

 

Before getting started there is one important caveat I need to mention.

 

**This is a broadcast tactic that will help you become more efficient at scheduling and sharing information. It’s one small piece of digital communication puzzle.

 

**To get the most out of social media you need to make connections and build relationships by engaging in real time. Enough said, let’s proceed.

 

Read more: http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/buffer-and-google-reader/

Via Martin Gysler, janlgordon

Sharing tool with colleagues is one way to increase your PLN.   Developing a Personal Learning Network (PLN) has been the single most valuable learning activity that I have ever been a part of.

In the session, Steven covers how a Personal Learning Network (PLN) can bring the world into your classroom, and gives a real-life example of how someone's PLN improved the classroom experience for her students.

Some of the tools that I use. Pinterest interests: What makes up my PLN (Personal Learning Network) http://t.co/xKlTZrBM...)...

Part 3 Developing a PLN: Finding Valuable Information on Twitter. This blog series was developed after leading a presentation on this topic for the Wayne Township Perfecting the Common and Beyond Conference.