Nonie

This is day 1 of the Intel Thinking with Technology course. It has been packed with fantastic ideas to show my colleagues. I'm really looking forward to working with these tools and developing my ideas further.

Day 2. Some great activities today to help clarify definitions and ideas about curriculum framing questions. I can understand conceptually the idea behind the Essential Question, but it's not so easy putting it into practice in relation to my topic. It appears that, ideally, the essential question would be a big (cross curriculum) idea with a number of units addressing the question, each unit being covered by a different area of the curriculum. In practice, in a secondary school, this is difficult to achieve. Can the essential question then be a more limited one, relevant to only one discipline area? (though strands 1 & 3 will be involved). I need to really clarify this for myself before I can move on and develop my unit.

I really like that a lot of the learning going on incidentally is about other technological tools like wikis, etc.

Day 3. I'll have lots of work to do over the weekend to think about the actual learning strategies for my unit. I think I'll finish with the students in groups arguing for or against the proposition "that mining should commence in Antarctica within the next 5 years" Each group will argue from a different point of view. This will provide an opportunity to use the Showing evidence tool in developing their arguments.

Day 4. I feel that I am now getting my head around the procedure. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the unit with appropriate learning activities that the year 8 SOSE teachers will be able to use. I'm really looking forward to showing colleagues at school these thinking tools - they are so powerful and so relevant to VELS. Thank you Anne for all your help.