Week 3 - The Frog Jump

Today we were given a design brief to create a contraption which makes a paper frog. We were told that all we could use was a: paper frog; rubber band; cardboard; and sticky tape. Theactivity was accompanied by an Investigate/Design, Produce and Analyse/Evaluate recording sheet.

Sean and I employed a catapult system design which worked with differing success (see the picturebelow). Interesting to see all the other approaches employed throughout the class. Makes for an interesting activity for the studentsbeing both fun and educational. However, while it was a fun activity, the real valueof this exercise would come from students completing the sheet and developing their higher order thinking skills. Importantly the process is cyclical in that if it doesn't work the first time, or could be improved, students have another attempt. The degree of difficulty could also be increased for those students which finish early e.g. tell those students that they have to redesign their creation to make the frog jump 1 metre.

Today's other activity focused around the use of QUIA which facilitates the development of web based educational activities. Our first task was to create our own quiz.

I chose a native animal quiz (What is My Favourite Animal?) which you see below. Great activity for kids, though the 30 day trial limitation is an issue. Good for kids to get to know each other though may create a bit of competition by having kids have to get the right answer -fear of failure.

We also created a few games on QUIA. I created a politically correct version of Hangman (see the piccy below taken from my phone). Thought this was a great activity for kids to work in pairs with both students developing their own themed hangman and then testing each other - will be great for spelling and creativity!!

QUIA is a great educational tool that can be used by the teacher or the student. Will definitely employ QUIA when (and if) I get a teaching job.

This week's lecture, which wasn't really touched on during the workshop, was on the protection of students online. After reading through the information and trying to monitor children on computers while on Practicum, I realise that this is a huge task! While I can control the information that I provide to chidlren (e.g. verifying the content of a website prior to conducting activites based on the website) I beleive it will be particualry difficult to stop children searching the web themselves and inadvertently coming across inappropriate content. This issue was highlighted to me when my Practicum class informed me that they all had FaceBook accounts. While Acceptable Use Agreements and Codes of Practice are a useful tools, vigilance on behalf of the teacher and parents will still be required.