iEARN UK recently ran a learning circle in Bristol as part of the Science City Bristol initiative. From the start, the project suffered a few problems – of the 5 participating schools who sent teachers to the briefing sessions, 2 sets of teachers weren’t sure why they were there and one set reported that their school had had an ICT upgrade over the summer and nothing worked – not very good for an online project! In addition, and most importantly, the timing of the project was driven by the needs of the Science City Bristol project, rather than being responsive to the curriculum pressures placed on the staff.
Learning circles involve groups of students from a number of schools. The groups use each other as collaborative resources to investigate and analyse issues related to the project topic, in this case the theme was ‘One World’. They commit to produce a report which could be video, powerpoint, poetry, a website or anything else that can be published online.
Nothwithstanding these problems, some of the student groups got stuck into the project and have now produced their reports. You can see these at the project site Look out for the obese giraffe – brilliant! The reports – video and powerpoint – show how the kids brought together a number of scientific themes that illustrate how interdependent we are on this fragile Earth.
3 responses so far ↓
1
dan roddy
// Jan 13, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Interesting idea, though I think it’s a missed opportunity that instead of asking people to endure a long download for the video, and limiting the audience to people who actively hunt it down, they didn’t think to pop the video on YouTube and just paste it in that way. Likewise they could have used slideshare for the ppts.
2
dickwillis
// Jan 13, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Thanks Dan. I agree re YouTube but iEARN [global] has a long established infrastructure which predates YouTube. They work with about a million kids a year worldwide who are the primary audience, mostly accessing project outputs via links within the iEARN platform. So there’s less of a problem with stuff being hunted down. I’ll pass on the comment about slideshare, tho the decision about the submitted format is probably up to the school groups themselves.
3
Mary Gowers
// Jan 14, 2009 at 11:26 am
Hi Dan
I am the coordinator for the One World project. I agree with you that using u-tube would allow more access. Our problem is most schools forbid the use of their material in this way. I have a meeting with the Bristol teamtomorrow and will ask for permission – with fingerscrossed.
As to slide show – again I can see your point. Maybe we need to offer them in both formats many schools want to be able to download and use the PowerPoints that way but as we open the material to external users a slide show would be more convenient.
Thank you for your really helpful comments
Mary
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