ChaosTheory: an example from Year 10 Geography
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A presentation I made at #TMcoast 26 July 2013. To make sense of it you need to read the notes in conjunction with the slides.
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ChaosTheory: an example from Year 10 Geography
- 1. Chaos Theory An example from Year 10 Geography 1 of 20
- 3. 3 of 20
- 4. Technology shift 4 of 20 BYOD: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7700311@N02/8465930151/ by JenniP98 Tablet: http://www.acer.com.au/ac/en/GB/content/models/tablets Acer Android Tablet
- 5. 5 of 20 Why don’t students at Oakhill College arrive at school on time? An investigation into urban growth and decline in Sydney’s Northwest Worksheet PBL/RAP
- 6. 6 of 20 Research Action Plan
- 8. 8 of 20 Focus Questions
- 9. 9 of 20 Technology Fail
- 10. 10 of 20
- 11. 11 of 20
- 12. 12 of 20
- 13. 13 of 20
- 14. 14 of 20
- 15. 15 of 20 Talking the talk
- 16. 16 of 20 The Managers
- 17. 17 of 20 LIARS?
- 18. 18 of 20 Honesty
- 19. 19 of 20
- 20. Hearts and minds 20 of 20 Pic: http://colinbanfield.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/start-of-a-missional-leaders-network/
Editor's Notes
- Chaos Theory – according to that oft quoted source, Wikipedia, Chaos Theory is about small differences resulting in widely diverging outcomes.And perhaps the product will be something beautiful.
- This was my classroom in my previous school where I worked for 9 years. It is a school known for being dynamic, innovative, student-centred and online/blended learning. Yet, I needed a change.
- My classroom in my new school, like most classrooms there, was set-up in rows with the focus definitely up the front. It is a school steeped in tradition and sport.
- I had moved from a school with BYOD to a school with 1:1 ACER Android Tablets, which I think are just AWFUL!
- A fellow new teacher changed one of our Year 10 Geography topics from Salinity to Urban Growth and Decline, a much more relevant topic for the students in our school. She had produced a 20 page booklet, some of which was engaging. There was resistance from some staff because they had always taught Salinity and didn’t want to change. As for me, I didn’t use the booklet, just the concept, and made it more into a PBL style unit following Geography’s Research Action Plan.
- A week or so earlier I had retrospectively applied the Research Action Plan to an excursion we’d had for coastal management. This time I wanted them to do it for real, authentically.
- I put on the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) the front page of the booklet with the question, Why don’t students at Oakhill College arrive at school on time? And then we brainstormed ideas on the normal whiteboard. (RAP Step 1)
- Then the students brainstormed some focus questions (RAP Step 2).
- The intention was that they start with secondary research (RAP Step 3) but there was a problem with the Wi-Fi. Chaos.
- So we jumped to RAP Step 4, primary research. This is when chaos went into overdrive. Students were racing around the class surveying each other madly.
- The questions they wrote were good and effective but the process was noisy.
- One student interviewed me. It was a pretty ordinary interview but I appreciated the effort. This lad comes across as quite slow but every now and again he is the clear voice amongst the chaos.
- This is a class of 30 mixed ability boisterous boys. This lesson was extraordinarily loud. To be honest, many students didn’t do any work at all, blaming the Wi-Fi and the Internet for their laziness.
- To keep them accountable I asked them to write what they achieved during the lesson and what you see on these slides is the result.
- If nothing else, they definitely knew what they should have been doing and most of them wrote it fairly eloquently.
- I could say the natural leaders rose to the occasion and pretend like some schools’ PR machines that everything students say and do supporting the school’s ethos is accurate. But really, how often do our students say and write what they think we want them to? In reality, I think these two were making excuses for their lack of work.
- I’m not sure that all this chaos is really what we want from our classes but I think it has to be better than constantly filling in a worksheet. By the way, since these students claim they conducted Internet research when the Wi-Fi didn’t work for anyone else, I doubt they’re true at all.
- I love this one. He did nothing. The most active he was in this lesson was to go to the toilet. Unfortunately I’ve yet to see this honesty result in self-improvement.
- We had two lessons of this chaos. Secondary data was gathered in the next attempt. Analysis with graphs and tables were made. But if they were asked to recall geographical facts, definitions and the like, they would fail. They also failed to produce much of a final product (report or presentation) and we ran out of time to complete it properly. Maybe later.
- I teach to hearts and minds. I hate teaching to a test. I much prefer the little gems in the midst of chaos. Recall and short-term knowledge doesn’t get you far in real life. These students attempted something that was relevant to them and it was as real as it could be made in the classroom. I’m happy with that.