After 6 months of hard R&D, we have built a curriculum and piloted Invention Based Learning at Bakhita School, Sao Paulo, Brazil
LEARNING IMPACTS – we’ve had some great learning results from Bakhita in Brazil, and Rafael Martins has put some video footage of children explaining and reflecting on their learning experiences on the blog. Watch out for lots more video on the blog and public site at the end of next week.
CURRICULUM – 3 units are completed, which means we now have 1 year’s worth of material and challenges online.
NEW MEMBERS – CLWB welcomes schools in Australia and Germany into the community. We look forward to seeing their students and teachers participate.
NEW CHALLENGES – following the successful sporting event challenge, we have some new challenges to engage and stretch your students.
They said it couldn’t be done, yet here in Brazil we have 8 year old children writing code in Python on Raspberry Pis and posting code to the blog for others in CLWB to use! We also have children who can (without adult supervision) connect Raspberry Pis to Laptop PCs using Putty and X-Terminal – System Engineering and Coding for 8-12 year olds! I’m sure there are others in CLWB who could “trump” this though – so lets hear about your Learning Impacts too. Check out the blog and filter for “Learning Impacts” for more information.
The first three CLWB modules (Themes) are complete and posted, and will take children from “Electrons to the Stars”. The first Theme starts with basic electronics, and we finish 21 Steps later with digital making tasks on the them of exploring the stars. Please try these out and post your comments/results online. Log onto the CLWB homepage, and use the left hand navigation to get to the first three Themes. Each of these Themes have Discussion Items, e.g F3-Aeronautics, “Step 1 – Navigation by the Stars”. The idea is for the community to shape these through comments and suggestions. The core of CLWB is ‘community driven R&D for learning’ and we’ve set up the platform specifically to facilitate this.
“A big welcome to CLWB to Eltham College, a top, innovative school in Melbourne, Australia. Amongst Eltham College’s values are excellence; being part of a global community; innovation; and sharing knowledge, so the College is ideally placed to participate in the CLWB community. A core mission for Eltham is to prepare their graduates to adapt to a rapidly changing world – to be “World Ready”. We therefore look forward to connecting staff and students at Eltham College to their counterparts in other CLWB schools, and seeing Eltham students excelling at CLWB challenges”.
A big welcome to CLWB also for Schloss Neubeurn – a top independent boarding school in Bavaria, Germany. Besides excelling in academic areas, the school prides itself on holistic education, international perspectives and connections, and modern approaches to education. The school excels at the use of technology, and has recently been awarded Microsoft Mentor School status. They also ensure that their students are ready to compete in the workplace, and recently held an enterprise event at which students had to pitch for venture capital. Schloss Neubeuern very much fits with the CLWB ethos and approach and we very much look forward to seeing the staff and students engage in CLWB activities.
The Worldwide Telescope Challenge was exciting, so we’ve extended it and rolled it up with the Explorer Challenge. We’ve created a detailed Step-by-Step guide to turning a recreation space (e.g. P ay-ground or yard) into “part of the world”, so children can enact medieval exploration. The guide comes complete with supporting files for download. We’ve broken down the maths into easy chunks, and left plenty of space for creativity. I’m here to help if anyone needs it.
Disaster Relief Challenge
How can technology help in major disasters like the one that struck the Philippines recently? Check out the Disaster Relief Challenge to get your students thinking about this.