What is critical thinking and how to think critically
By Steve Bareham, Selkirk College
“The basic concepts of critical thinking are being able to understand or figure out what the problem (or conflict, contradiction) is; to direct thinking to the specific purpose of solving the problem; understanding the frames of reference or the points of view involved; identifying and understanding the underlying assumptions; identifying and understanding the basic concepts and ideas that are being used; citing evidence, data, and reasons and their interpretations; following lines of thought that are advanced; and understanding inferences, implications, and consequences. (Beyer, 1985; Nosich, 1993; Paul, 1990). There is a creative component to strong critical thinking such that originality, freshness, and inventiveness are brought into the problem-solving and applications.”
J. Davis-Seaver, T. Smith, D. Leflore, N. Carolina A&T State U.
By Steve Bareham, Selkirk College and author Think Well & Prosper
Learning how to manage the thinking process – to think critically – is the most important thing any person can do.
Mention the words “thinking critically,” or “critical thinking” to most people and you will get responses ranging from noncomprehension, to panic, to outright boredom — it all sounds so academic, complicated, and tedious. But, a case can be made that centuries of focus on how we think, by some of the greatest minds the world has known, is important in that thought has been instrumental in evolving our social systems. As such, a short paraphrased history may be useful to show how that evolution transpired.¹ Read more…
New eBook helps authors self publish with Kobo Writing Life
No one disputes that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing has a very strong foothold in the eBook world, but a competitor with a smart management team and a parent company with very deep financial pockets is nipping at its heels — that company is KOBO.
Kobo, in my view, is constructively redressing issues that many self-published authors have with Kindle, and I’ll go into details later.
Don’t misunderstand my opening sentences. Of course you should offer your book(s) on Amazon — it currently holds an estimated 45% of the eBook market share — but after uploading ten eBooks with both companies, there are good reasons that every self-published eBook author should ALSO use Kobo’s Writing Life platform. In my view, its best years are still to come as it deepens its global penetration and as the eBook era grows. Read more…
Join the Ebook publishing era
Let there be no doubt – an information revolution is underway. If you read eBooks, you’re part of the innovation upheaval as an acquirer of online information and knowledge.
And, if you’re reading this to gain information about self publishing, it’s likely that you already are, or are about to be, an active disseminator of information yourself.
The word “revolution” is not hyperbole. Read more…
While scientists and researchers engage in debate about whether or not people are innately violent, they don’t doubt that our genes and cells have one imperative — survival of the host. To protect that host, they will do anything, but what they do is not at the conscious level.
The need to survive, to procreate, and to protect our progeny is the most powerful instinct in our being. Read more…
This examination of anthropoktonos, “man, murderer of man,” is written while a spate of mass killings around the world are still fresh in our memories and that have many of us asking: why do people kill?
Anyone interested in such macabre information can quickly find long lists of incidents where murderers have killed dozens of people to get their moments of infamy. There have been 934 people murdered in mass killings in the U.S. in the past seven years. School children, theatre goers, and people in shopping malls are easy targets for what we like to label as madmen.
Of the top 10 school massacres documented around the world, five took place in the U.S., claiming 131 victims. Canada is in the top ten, too: Mark Lepine killed 14 women at a Montreal university in 1989. Read more…
Books about critical thinking from Amazon listmania
The listmania author from Amazon says: “If you’re looking for the best books on critical thinking, here they are — 17 of the best in the world!
Critical thinking and thinking critically are words more of us should think about!
The way we think determines how successful we are in life, in our careers, and in our relationships. Other than breathing, nothing is more importan to life than the way we think. But, most people have never studied the thinking process; most don’t know there is one.
Every school student should study thinking skills and develop knowledge that can be practiced. These books can aid in that goal. Children should be taught critical thinking as soon as they start school, the parts of thinking aren’t that complicated.”
How many times, in your work life, have your employers provided you with complete and accurate job descriptions? Often, the answer is “never.” If this is your answer, it means you were expected to do jobs (and presumably were evaluated on performance) without specifics about roles and responsibilities. Not good.
They are the secret sauce of good management.
Critical thinking can boost staff performance
Thinking well is important in all aspects of life, but tackling it explicitly is often overlooked in work-world training programs. Never have thinking skills been more important than now, in the 3rd Millennium, when companies worldwide are competing for every competitive edge possible.
New research shows that women are more analytical than men, that they have surpassed men in IQ scores for the first time, and they are already better at emotional intelligence (see links below for proof). This means women are besting men in some very important areas. Men had better pay attention.
Never has critical thinking been more important to succeed in life and career, but most people are foggy about what it really is. If women study critical thinking explicitly, they can gain a rapid and significant edge over male counterparts because they will enhance already keen analytical and reasoning skills – key to becoming even better decision makers and problem solvers.
Read more…
Every year around the world, more than 115,000 civilians are killed by small arms and automatic weapons. Almost 32,000 people die from guns in the U.S. annually if you include suicides and accidents, 85 people every day, or 3.5 dead every hour.
There are about 11,700 murders in the U.S. and about 200 in Canada where victims are targeted during crimes, in domestic assaults, and at the hands of mentally unstable gunmen. Some are killed accidentally, innocent bystanders with a kismetic curse. Read more…
Making $ from eBooks isn’t mysterious; it just takes specific work and a lot of time. The intrepid succeed . Want to? You can read text here, or, if you prefer, see a slideshow, with music, on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUIArxh2ips
The battle: Thousands of eBook authors vie for the same eyes. Here’s how to grab them on a promo budget of only $200.
Money can be had: Do about 20 things to greatly increase your chance of boosting $$$$ income…most don’t do them. Read more…
NELSON, B.C. — The Internet empowers people to communicate as never before, says a Canadian college teacher, but the clamor for attention means most messages go nowhere because the people relaying them lack relevant knowledge and skills.
Author and business communication specialist Steve Bareham, a marketing instructor at Selkirk College, says eBook authors and bloggers who are trying to earn livings, face millions of competitors.
“The law of big numbers dictates that very few will succeed. It’s an odd paradox that we can literally reach out to the world in minutes with an online post, but shooting blind into cyberspace is frustrating, pointless and even damaging. We’ve never had such enormous soap boxes, but we’re all talking at once, so very few get heard.” Exclusively on Amazon. Read more…
While there are plenty of big names professing to sell eBooks online, my experience is that just one will help you pay your mortgage. After eight months of sales, and basing my assertion not on one, but six eBook offerings, Amazon is the only eBook seller that produces sales.
There are good reasons to explain why Amazon performs better than its competitors. First off, it does a much better job of helping its authors market their books. Let me list just half a dozen ways it does a superior job: Read more…
The eBook Author Success Guide
New things are being discovered every day about the process and the marketing and promotion of eBooks. Things move quickly, and this is a whole new world from print books with legacy publishers.
So, here are important tips to help eBook authors immediately. The first that has to do with keeping a positive attitude in a complex and sometimes trying endeavor of being your own publisher.
Prepare for a long distance race, not a sprint
While a book can get written and published very quickly, don’t expect sales to happen fast unless you’re extremely lucky or already famous (in which case you likely wouldn’t be reading this!). The message here is to toughen up your ego and don’t worry about your sales numbers for months after your book(s) go up. There are two things that are crucial: Read more…
Amazon has millions of books for sale
YOUR TASK IS TO GET FOUND!
How to self publish an ebook: Giving you dozens of ways to get found is what this practical, easy-to-follow how-to ebook publishing guide does for ebook authors.
eBook self publishing, or epublishing, is hot and still in its infancy, and there are advantages to being in early and on the ground floor, though it may not always seem like it when one can’t crack the rankings barrier. This how-to-self-publish an ebook guide can help. Read more…
Few people devote time to think about, or to improve, their thinking processes, preferring, instead, to focus on outcomes–decisions, plans, conclusions, and judgments–that so preoccupy the North American psyche. This fixation on the latter stages of thinking is backwards and responsible, in large part, for results that are not always optimal.
Think Well & Prosper provides insights into the structure of thinking. It breaks down–analyses–the thinking process into understandable steps and sequences that each of us can easily follow if we so choose. And the steps and sequences aren’t particularly complicated.
There are huge debates going on in the eBook world about the appropriate price points for online books, and the opinions differ, so it gets a bit messy for Indie authors given that books now range from free and up, with 99 cents and $2.99 being common both for fiction and nonfiction, but if you check the top 100 of both categories you will see that pricing is all over the map with some very strange price points, like $7.40. There’s a lot of experimenting going on with some Indie authors thinking 99 cents is the Holy Grail toward profit while others pick a price like $17.54 for books that aren’t really differentiated to explain the price differential. It’s an important part of your eBook marketing strategy, so is well worth research time and effort.
NELSON, B.C. — Humans are drowning in a technological information flood so enveloping that it will take decades to decipher the socio-psychological implications, says a Canadian college educator and author.
“The stage is set for winners and losers, but some of the negative outfall may surprise people,” predicts Steve Bareham, a management communication instructor in the School of Hospitality & Tourism at Selkirk College. One of the unanticipated consequences of our new super connected world is something he calls online obsessive compulsive disorder (OOCD). Read more…
eBooks that enlighten 