For this week’s Web 2.0 Weekly, we’ll be taking a look at a great resource of critical thinking exercises that may not even be on the radar of most educators.  If any of you are frequent NPR listeners, you’ve probably at least heard of the Car Talk program.  Car Talk has been on the air weekly since 1977.  Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the two hosts of the program, are MIT graduates who opened their own auto repair shop.  The show itself is both humorous and highly informative as Ray and Tom seek to answer callers’ automotive-related questions.

By this point, you might be wondering just what this has to do with 21st century education.  As we all know, developing critical thinking skills is one of the major goals of 21st century educational reform.  One way to develop these skills is by working through questions or situations that pose a problem that requires students to think about it from a variety of perspectives and combine their existing knowledge in often novel ways.

A regular feature of Car Talk is the Puzzler.  The Puzzler is a riddle-like question, sometimes automotive in nature, that is often presented as a real-life scenario.  Puzzlers have also included logic problems, mathematics, and word games.  The nice thing about most of the Puzzler questions is that they are short and can be related quickly using, at most, a chalkboard/whiteboard to jot down important details.  Even better, the Car Talk website has an archive of Puzzlers (and answers) going back to 1996, providing educators with a ready-made source of critical thinking exercises.

These Puzzlers would be great to use during those times when a lesson has finished early, but not early enough to start the next one, or for students to work on after finishing a test.  They could also be used a bell work, to prime students’ brains to think critically and creatively, or at the end of the period to give students something to think about overnight.  You might even find some Puzzlers that could be incorporated directly in to a lesson.

Admittedly, the Puzzler archive isn’t technically a “Web 2.0″ tool.  However, the skills that the Puzzler strengthens are most certainly 21st century skills.  Also, if you find you enjoy the Puzzler, you can subscribe to the Puzzler’s RSS feed to receive new Puzzlers directly in your feed reader.  You can also subscribe to the free Car Talk podcast to hear the weekly broadcast at your own convenience.

The Puzzler archives are accessible at no charge and simply require a modern web browser and Internet connection to access.  The Puzzler RSS feed can be accessed using a feed reader like Google Reader or the built-in RSS tools in most modern web browsers.