Smartphones: Let's think critically!

Several people recommended this Atlantic article by Jean Twenge to me recently (link below). The author makes a compelling, and frightening, argument about the impact of smartphones on our students.

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? 

Psychologist Sara Rose Cavanagh wrote a response in Psychology Today, arguing that Twenge doesn't have evidence to back up her claims in the Atlantic article:

No, Smartphones are NOT Destroying a Generation

Psychology teachers might be able to use these two articles as part of a useful critical thinking lesson: what can we "know" based on a lot of correlational evidence? What can't we know? What conclusions should we draw about important issues when all we can get is correlational evidence?


posted by Rob McEntarffer

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Substantial Psychology Paper Assignment

Earlier in the summer, Eric Castro, one of our exceptional San Francisco Psychology teachers wrote

on a listserv a project he was working on for his social science department. That list is pretty inactive, so I wanted to post his request here.

Here is the request Eric posted:

In response to Steve Jones' and David Lane's questions, I've published what prompted my original solicitation:

http://eecastro.com/post/144609778450/research-assignment

The short version is that my Social Science department has surveyed and interviewed eight constituencies about our course offerings and curriculum: grammar school teachers, 9th graders, 12th graders, other departments at our own school, recent alumni, other high schools, college professors, and employers around the San Francisco Bay Area. From those has emerged two needs: greater ethnic and cultural diversity across our course offerings, and better preparation for college-level research and writing.

Eric Castro 

Social Science Faculty 

St Ignatius College Prep, San Francisco

Please post your ideas and feedback in the comments.




Posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Teach Psych Science

I'm gearing up for a new semester of AP Psychology in about 2 weeks and this semester I am starting with Research Methods on Day 1 and pushing History and Perspectives to the end of the semester, right before the exam. (My thought - they just don't have enough background knowledge to navigate the perspectives, and it is always such a struggle. And, my first day lecture is generally on structuralism and functionalism, Wundt, etc... and the first night reading is the whole History chapter with 2453 names and many of my students get overwhelmed with all that content right  off the bat. I'm going to see if moving History and Perspectives to the last unit after Social Psychology will make more sense to them as they'll be able to put all those perspectives, names, theories and movements of psychology into some sort of timeline and framework.)

ANYWAY...while looking around for some new Hindsight Bias, Confirmation Bias and Scientific Method-type activities, I came across this website. Um...wow. It is called "Teach Psych Science" and appears to be a great place to find activities for the teaching of various scientific method-type activities and also statistics and research type activities. The website appears to accompany the following Research Methods text from Macmillan Publishing (which I promptly requested a sample of!)

Teach Psych Science Link 

This great intro to Intuition vs Empirical Reasoning seems like a great way to get kids thinking about psychology as an empirical science for the first day! It is a variation of the "Which Door to Choose" activity.

Other good ones I came across?:

When does a joke go too far?- Ethics 

Smarties vs. DumDums - Internal Validity Activity 

Seriously - get to this website and check it out! Everything here looks amazing and very engaging for the high school psychology classroom. I'm excited to explore some more!!

--- Posted by Amy Ramponi

(Remember that snow and cold I wanted, yeah. It is 7 degrees out today. Low is going to be -1. What was I thinking?!)http://teachpsychscience.org/

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Project Look Sharp: A Media Literacy Site

I recently ran across a cool site called Project Look Sharp. In their words, "Project Look Sharp is a media literacy initiative of Ithaca College that develops and provides lesson plans, media materials, training, and support for the effective integration of media literacy with critical thinking into classroom curricula at all education levels, including integration with the new common core standards." Definitely worth a look if you deal with any of the topics below. They also have some intriguing lesson plans and materials to use.

Check them out at: http://www.projectlooksharp.org/

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Rethinking food labels

One thing I am always on the lookout for is an idea that fits into many different areas of psychology. In issues like these, we can ask students to draw in several different content areas in novel ways, but perhaps even more importantly, they are fresh and new. It's hard for students to plagiarize from one year to the next if your assignment incorporates ideas that weren't even around last year.

This is one of them. Rethink the Food Label is a project by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s News21 program and Good Magazine. They asked the public to revise the current food label with better labels that "make it easier to read and more useful to people who want to consume healthier, more nutritious and wholesome food." In the space below you'll see more examples, but I hope that you can think of some ways to incorporate this in your class: human factors, heuristics, framing, hunger motivation, and persuasion techniques come to my mind. How else can you use this? And what other areas could you apply this to besides food labeling?
-- posted by Steve

 

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Quackwatch and Snopes

Quackwatch?  What the heck is that, a bird-watching group that focuses on Mallards?  No, it is a web site that is devoted to exposing those who are engaged in health fraud.  Dr. Stephen Barrett, a psychiatrist, takes skepticism to a higher level than most of us practice.  For that, he's encountered some critics and controversy.  Does that make his conclusions wrong?  A good debate to be sure.  He exposes some very popular methods of healing as scams or ineffective.  Some "cherished beliefs are challenged."  Personally, I like anything that takes us out of our cognitive comfort zone.  

As teachers of psychology and science, we've undoubtedly encountered students who share with us experiences that family members have had with healing magnets, crystals, homeopathy, special vitamins, colon cleansing, etc.  When I hear of these, I will go to Quackwatch.org to see what they and the research has to say.

I will also do this with Snopes.com when I hear things that sound like Urban Legends.  For those unfamiliar, urban legends are stories that are told and retold as fact even though there is often no basis for the story--they are modern myths.  From Wikipedia, "Like all folklore, contemporary legends are not necessarily false, but they are often distorted, exaggerated, or sensationalized over time."  While they make for great entertainment and even as cautionary tales, they are not true and often reflect fears, biases and prejudices of the tellers.  Anyone who recalls the "Birther Conspiracy" or the lady with the cat caught in the rain who microwaved it to dry it out faster will recognize the power of these stories.  Often, it has happened to a FOAF (friend of a friend)--but it's REAL!!!!!  according to the teller. 

Both sites deal with our individual cognition as well as social cognition on top of research methods.  They would fit nicely within any of those units.

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Intelligence? Definitely Problem-solving

In keeping with Kent's theme of intelligence, I found a great video podcast a while back about a street magician whose primary focus is critical thinking and skepticism. Brian Brushwood's podcast is called, Scam School and is part of Revision 3's hosting services.

The episode entitled, House of Nails, is about being able to balance about 10 nails on top of one vertically mounted nail of the same type. I've been aware of this "trick" for almost 15 years thanks to Charlie Blair-Broeker back at an institute at Nebraska Wesleyan.

You can show the videos in class or learn them yourself (he shows the viewer how every trick is done) and amaze and astound your students. Because he does his work on the street or in a bar, you may want to learn the tricks yourself depending upon your district and judgment. Do at least check them out and enjoy trying to figure out--they are great puzzlers for those of us who need to do brain exercises. :-)

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The Speed of Information and Our Place in the World

While this does not relate directly to the teaching of psychology, it does relate to our growth as learners and implications on both teaching and learning. It is a video called, "Did You Know?" and it contains a number of statistical facts about technology, the number of people in the world/regions of the world, and global competition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8

The original video on YouTube was described this way: Wonderful, concise video that helps raise awareness of the issues of globalization in our newly connected world first raised in Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat. Karl Fisch remixed content from David Warlick, Thomas Friedman, Ian Jukes, Ray Kurzweil and others, added some music, and came up with the following presentation.

Version 3.0 is described this way: 3.0 for 2008 - Newly Revised Edition Created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod; Globalization & The Information Age. It was even adapted by Sony BMG at an executive meeting they held in Rome this year. Credits are also given to Scott McLeod, Jeff Brenman

Within a psychology class, one could use it as an exercise in critical thinking. What do you think the authors' intentions were with the video? How would the average American view this video--any emotional reactions? If so, why? Were the positive or negative emotions-explain. Are the statistics accurate? If they are, how are they being used in crafting a message about the future of the world and our role as Americans within the world? What messages are being sent? How does the video use images? Does it over or underwhelm? Explain. How is text used to create a message? One could even go into personality theories and how each might react to this (e.g. Adler and inferiority complex, Rogers and unconditional positive regard, etc.)

I leave it to our readers to add their own questions to the comments section.

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