ISLAND ODYSSEY

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ISLAND ODYSSEY
www.learnz.org.nz/2001
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real people, real locations ... in real time!
real children, real teachers in real
classrooms!
and real ICT!!
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Implications for teaching and learning with LEARNZ
empty vessels
fires to be lit
passive, receptive
active, inquiry learning
sage on the stage
guide on the side
subject centred, fragmented
integrated
carefully scripted, controlled
unpredictability
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• The Straight and Narrow
• One pathway
• Children
• travel together as homogenous group
• Teacher
• controls, pushing, pulling or prodding
• Curriculum - a linear course to be run (currere),
  with an end point, a transmissive curriculum
• Children - empty vessels, blank slates needing to
  be filled with content

Prepackaged, 'one-size-fits-all' approach to
curriculum, inhibits divergence or deviation
Those children who are able to run this course
qualify for inclusion in the A team. The others
who struggle and are unable to run this clearly
defined course become the B team.
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• Curriculum as a complex
• domain.
• Many pathways
• Children may progress
• as one large group, in
• small groups or individually
• Teacher supports children
• helps build bridges, creates vehicles

A range of experiences with which children can
interact, revisit and reflect upon from different
angles. As time passes, it is possible to look
back at past landmarks and reinterpret them in a
different light and with new meaning.
This curriculum requires children and teachers to
be curious and adventurous, not as spectators or
docile passengers, but as active curriculum
decision makers.
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The LEARNZ Learning Model - a complex domain
Students
Teachers
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real people, real locations in real time!
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Planning for an integrated unit
Identify context
Brainstorm key words
Develop main ideas, understandings, concepts
from brainstorm
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Lake Rotoiti Achievement Aims

• To gain an understanding of order and pattern
  in the diversity of living organisms, including
  the special characteristics of NZ plants and
  animals

• To investigate an ecosystem and understand the
  interdependence of living organisms, including
  humans and their relationship with their physical
  environment

• To gain an understanding of how people's
  activities influence places and the environment,
  and are influenced by them

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Lake Rotoiti Overview
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The Beech Forest - a narrative

• Like other narratives, this story has
• characters, setting, plot with complications
• 1. Beginning - once upon a time before people
• 2. Middle -complications that arose with
• the introduction of new characters
• the inter-relationships and competition
• within the ecosystem
• unknowns for scientists
• 3. Ending - they all lived happily ever after??
• Affirmative action?

Central role of beech trees and honeydew (a high
energy food source)
Mystery - masting and kaka nesting
Intervention of humans can restore balance within
the ecosystem system
Food chains - links predators
Introduced species upset the balance of the
ecosystem.
Changes in environmental conditions alter the
balance of the ecosystem
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real people, real locations in real time!
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Audioconferences - learning conversations
open and closed questions, Blooms taxonomy

• Skinny questions (low level, factual)
• Ask for facts, straightforward, cut and dried
  answers.
• What, where, who, when, how many
• If these are the only ones asked, will children
  believe that correct, right, single answers are
  most important?
• Much of this information is already on the web.

• Fat questions (higher order, thinking
  questions)
• Ask for elaborated answers with examples and
  details - inference, reaction, reasoning,
  comparisons
• Why, how
• Often the intention of the skinny question is
  inherent in the fat question.

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1. Gathering stage Find the information,
collect facts and data
on the lines
2. Processing stage Make sense of the
information and use it - compare, reason,
generalise
between the lines

• 3. Applying stage
• Think beyond the information and use their new
  learning in relevant ways
• imagine, predict, idealise

beyond the lines
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Gwen Gawith, Blooming Questions Good Teacher
Term 1 2000

• Its really hard to ask a question when you
  dont know enough to know what you need to know.

• Once you have a base of factual information it
  is easier to use higher level thinking skills to
  synthesise information and build answers to
  thinking questions.

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