Writing as Critical Thinking

==Blooms taxonomy==

==So…==

• When we use flashcards to study, we are memorizing.
• When we find study materials online, we are repeating.
• When we teach a peer in a study group, we are explaining.
• When we take a test, we are stating.
• When we write in college, we are applying, analyze, and evaluating.
• When we publish, we are creating.

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==When does Critical Thinking Happen?==

• This ability to think critically in day-to-day situations is sometimes dubbed "street smarts"
• Materials, jargon, equations, theories, or histories of difficult and heavily guarded academic subjects, make critical thinking more complex and much more difficult, and it requires much slower and more deliberate mental moves.
• Writing is the tool that we use for that, as it is a way for us to store our thoughts on a page, change and rework those thoughts, and then eventually come to rational and informed conclusions.
• This means that critical thinking happens on the page. When we draft and then revise our work, we are doing the slow work of critically thinking about it.

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==What happens next?==

• This is great news for many reasons, primarily because it allows all of the tools and information on the internet to influence our thinking.

• We can have an annotated pdf and a word processor open at the same time, switching between them as we work through a complex idea.

• We can fill in missing information with quick Wikipedia or encyclopedia Britannica searches.

• We google anything. We can find anything.

  We can think about anything.

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