A School Outing

Part of the Luebeck's Skyline

Today I went off with two teachers and their 6th grade class to Ice World on a mobile learning project. Last week, the 6th graders created multimedia interactive questionnaires with a program my colleague developed. The students transferred the questionnaires from their PCs onto PDAs. They took the PDAs and digital cameras to Ice World exhibit.

Instead of the teacher trying to keep the students' interests focused during the outing by recounting all sort of information, today, the students were on their own with their PDAs; answering the questionnaire another group created for them.

Cloudy and Clear Ice

The two teachers said it was a strange experience to be on a school outing and just stand around doing nothing. The children ran around enthusiastically looking at the exhibit, exchanging information, and helping each other to answer their self-created questionnaires.

Rippled Ice

I explained to the two teachers that, traditionally, it is the teacher who is the person who profits most from school outings. For, it is the teacher who does most of the research, hypothesizes about what might be relevant for the outing, and then s/he makes up the questionnaires and routing plans. In today’s outing the students did it all, from beginning to end. The chance to work on computers, PDAs, digital cameras is a huge motivator.

I get so much pleasure in seeing students learning on their own.