Information today comes from Margaret Lloyd, Senior lecturer in ICT at Queensland University of Technology.
Margaret writes
Following our terrific success in the last two years with the Oz-teachers’ project – Land Yachts – we are sailing again…
At the close of last year’s project, one teacher wrote:
Once again thanks to you and your enthusiasm! We did race, we did have a couple of successes and a couple who “failed to proceed”. … The whole event has been marvellous, the children have become much clearer thinkers in a small scientific way and have learned to record, compute and speak about their efforts. I look forward to next year … I can see some much more streamlined planning on my behalf and, as a result of the assembly item my class presented, I’ve already been asked “If I’m in your class next year are we going to do that boat thing?”
The project is a Technology/Science project open to students in Years 4-7 and also welcomes pre-service teachers to take part.
In 2007, we had 477 children, 18 teachers and about 120 student teachers all building small wheeled vehicles and testing out some fundamental principles of physics, motion and material properties along the way. The blogging and comments were the heart of the project as participants were able to share their designs as they progressed. The scanned plans, images and video made the project come alive.
In 2008, we had about 800 children from all across Australia and two home-schoolers from the U.S. taking part.
Have a look at http://www.otn.edu.au/projects/yachts/ for more information.
We will start ‘sailing’ on October 19 and ‘finish’ in on December 4. Your Race Day could be any time in the week beginning November 30. Registrations will open shortly. We will again be creating a teachers’ email list for support while the project will make use of blogs and allow the entry of data, images and a video.
Please forward this invitation to others who may be interested in taking part. Any particular questions or intention to register should be directed to James Lloyd who’ll be the Commodore of the Fleet for 2009.
If you would like to showcase what is happening with ICT in your school, then check what From the Coal Face is all about and email me with a short article and perhaps a photo or two.
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