Problem Solving Software vs. Brainstorming Tools. Week 8

What is problem solving software? Contrast it with brainstorming tools. How does each promote critical-thinking skills?

Problem solving software is a software program written to help students practice their problem solving skills. For instance, in the field of science, it could help a student formulate and test a hypothesis, and in the field of mathematics, it could help that same student find multi-step strategies to find solutions to complex word problems, correctly apply mathematical formulas, correctly identify and apply theories, rules and concepts to predict outcomes. In a psychology class, if a student were to study the aspects of behavior, they could then deduce what a person with X personality would do in situation Y. The benefit to problem solving software is that they help the student by allowing them to work out the problems physically and mentally, and thus they learn by doing. In math (since that is my field), students can test out relationships and see if they hold true for all values of x and y, and make a logical hypothesis for all cases. The problem solving software is good, since it is a multimedia program, and as we learned last week, today’s students are different from yesterday’s students, and need a wide array of constant stimuli to keep them entertained.

Brainstorming tools is a program to digitally connect two or more ideas and create connections between them. Some of them only use text, while other use clip arts and other forms of media. What usually happens is this: you start with one or two main ideas. Let us say we’re going to start with the idea of food. For the sake of argument, we are going to say there are two kinds of food, healthy and fast food. So, from the main idea of food, we branch off an idea bubble to healthy food, and an idea bubble to fast food. From the healthy food bubble, we then branch off to other forms of healthy food, such as organic, lean, low-fat, low-carb, low-calorie, etc. For fast food, we would then branch off some fast food choices, such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Taco Bell, etc. If we wanted to go into more detail, under McDonald’s, we could do another branch off and branch Big Mac, double cheeseburger, French fries, chicken Mcnuggets, and if we even wanted to go further than that, we could branch off from Big Mac and say hamburger patty, lettuce, bread, sauce, etc.

The way that problem solving software differs from brainstorming tools is that problem solving software builds the skills that a student needs to solve (perhaps) complex problems that they may encounter later in life, such as money matters or how to get around a certain situation. Brainstorming is, in simple terms, how two or more main ideas are connected, and finding the connections between the main ideas, and what sub-categories fall under each main idea. It does not involve any problem solving, except to figure out what sub-idea goes with what main idea. Each promotes critical thinking in that problem solving makes a student think really hard on trying to figure out different way to find a solution to one problem, and brainstorming requires a student to figure out what pieces of the puzzle go together. For instance, say we have a topic on the discussion of sea animals. And we talk about sea snakes. Will a third grader know that an eel is a fish, or will they think that an eel is a snake? What about a sea horse?