We are now back from the Christmas break and have 3 weeks until exams, Yikes!!!
My grade 11 Ancient History class has 2 research projects and an exam to prepare for in that time. The first project is a group one, where students have to create a trivia board game. They get to choose between Medieval Europe or Islamic Africa. They can imitate an existing game, or invent one of their own.
The iPads have been great in class, it allows them to surf the web and find info. I've directed them to our school board's Virtual Library, where they have access to licensed encyclopedias and periodicals. Of course Google and Wikipedia are also popular destinations.
This part allows for me to have conversations with students about sources and their reliability. How do you know that what you are reading is correct? What can you do to verify the info?
It also forces students to think about how they search for their info, once you get to Google or Wikipedia, what do you type into that search box? How do you get to the info you are after. These are the important things I hope they take from this class. This is what will serve them in the long run, not knowing who was the English king in 1066.
One challenge has been to keep them focused. Facebook is a first stop after turning it on. Instead of beating my head against that wall I've given them the first five minutes to satisfy their craving and then ask that they focus on their work. I've also imposed mini-deadlines. This project requires that each group member prepare 15 trivia questions, so by the end of today's class they needed 10 done, otherwise they were coming back to finish at lunch. That worked quite well.
I'll be back later with more on how the project is going.
Hey, I look forward to following the progress. I linked up your blog to my twitter--probably notification of some sort when you make a new entry.
ReplyDeleteI've been wondering about what kids would think if they had their own sims-like character through an ipad app that allows them to "play" themselves in class, as an alter-student. Would they create an identical twin, would they give themselves a second chance to at being the student they've always wanted to be, for better or worse. Say they were split into groups and then, while physically sitting around with each other working on a task, you ask them to form another grouping, but this time they had to regroup in sims mode and accomplish another task. anyway, all the best.