Critical Thinking Exercise

There are quite a few schools of thought as the best approaches to use, evaluate, learn, and practice critical thinking. These are mostly in agreement with each other and simply have variations based on specifics methodology. Some web sites that sum this are;

• eSSortment - a simple summary of critical thinking in the form of questions.
• Wikipedia article - This is probably the best article on this (of course it changes with time as everything in wikipedia does), but it covers all the basic tenets about critical thinking.

Questions

After a recent presentation on global warming one of my students was asked if they believed that the media should give equal "space" or attention to both sides of the opinions on global warming. Is there a flaw in this question and if so what is it? How should you respond?

Some good CT problems are logic puzzles (realizing that solving logic puzzles is only a small aspect of CT - it is still important). Some good Logic puzzles are available at http://edhelper.com/logic_puzzles.htm - there are plenty there that are worth using. If you get tired of those there are plenty more here  http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/logic/puzzles.php 

SO we've established the ability to apply logic is important to CT - what other characteristics embody good CT skills? Next we want to employ the concept of Lateral Thinking. Wikipedia has a very good description of lateral thinking which is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking. A fun exercise that can use lateral thinking is at this site at Geek Speak Game.  Another activity is to have the students think up riddles that employ lateral thinking.