{"id":34760,"date":"2024-01-10T12:03:28","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T20:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=34760"},"modified":"2024-01-10T12:03:28","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T20:03:28","slug":"connecting-the-dots-a-writers-reflection-on-critical-thinking-and-synthesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/connecting-the-dots-a-writers-reflection-on-critical-thinking-and-synthesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting the Dots: A Writer’s Reflection on Critical Thinking and Synthesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a school librarian and first started teaching middle and high school students how to do research in 2004, the information landscape was drastically different than it is now. Yes, they were using the internet, but Wikipedia was considered an unreliable, forbidden resource for any purpose at all (now, depending on your topic, it <\/span>might<\/span><\/i> be a reasonable place to get an overview before starting real research). And I had to teach my students that anyone could write anything and post it online. They couldn\u2019t just blindly believe something because they \u201cfound it on Google.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When I left teaching after twelve years, I had just researched and written my first self-published book about parenting and I became a family and life coach. Soon after, I studied copywriting and marketing, first for my own business, then for clients. I always have to ask critical thinking questions to write copy. (Eg, Who is the audience? What are the author\u2019s credentials and reliability? Are the facts substantiated? etc.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Three-plus years ago I began researching material to write a major book about discipleship (which is close to being published\u2026 but isn\u2019t quite\u2026 yet). My husband still teases me because I have shelves and shelves of books, most of which I haven\u2019t \u201cread\u201d. But I\u2019ve dipped into 85% of them either to gather information for the book, or because I was interested in the topic and wanted to get \u201csome more\u201d information.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Writing has never been a linear process for me. Even with my hand-written papers in college, I was always writing things in the margins and putting arrows to show where the sentences belonged. Heavy, clunky computers with word processing – in the late 1980s when I was first in grad school – were a lifesaver. Today, ChatGPT is my daily researching and writing friend to bainstorm, get my wheels turning, and give me something to work with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, I taught critical thinking skills to students (which, sadly, too many people give up when they get to be adults). And I\u2019m very used to skimming and scanning through the Table of Contents, the online reviews, the Amazon reading sample, and key paragraphs of a book, to zero in on the content that I\u2019m looking for. I see now that the first gift of writing the discipleship book has been what God has taught me about himself and following Jesus. But another gift has also been learning how to gather information, sift through it, make connections between things, and synthesize everything into either more understandable content, or even something totally new.<\/span><\/p>\n

After reading and viewing all the assignments for this week, I would say that although I already have a system that \u201cworks\u201d for note-taking, I could use an upgrade in my note-taking strategies. Obsidian is new to me, and I\u2019m eager to see how it can help me connect even more dots, even more efficiently than I already do. I look forward to working with Obsidian and the <\/span>“Zettelkasten” method.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a school librarian and first started teaching middle and high school students how to do research in 2004, the information landscape was drastically different than it is now. Yes, they were using the internet, but Wikipedia was considered an unreliable, forbidden resource for any purpose at all (now, depending on your topic, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34761,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34760\/revisions\/34761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}