We've been hard at work on our biodiversity deep learning journey! I must say that this class has taken to deep learning like fish to water. Most students are really excited to learn about a topic of their own choosing. We are developing classroom experts in; climate change, ocean conservation, energy conservation, tropical/amazonian forest ecosystems and conservation, medicinal plants, illegal and big game hunting and the arctic ecosystem to name, solar panels and many more interesting ideas!
Most students have recorded a lot of their learning in folders or slides. They have now moved on to choosing/creating a final task. At the beginning, most of the class was solely interested in creating google slides to present what they had learned. However, we took a second look at the Character progression and noticed that at the most advanced level students use their knowledge to come up with solutions which improve their own lives but also the whole worlds. Thus, I am trying to get students to come up with final tasks that make a difference. This has been our biggest challenge so far as climate change or the destruction of the rainforest are complex problems and it's hard to come up with a solution that WE can do. So far final tasks vary from websites to inform the world on a particular issue, creating a book to put in our classroom and school library, raising money as a class to "adopt" an animal through the WWF, writing a proposal on the possibility of installing solar panels on the school. I am really trying to open the student's eyes to the possibility that there is more to life than Google slides.
We will hopefully be working on/finishing up our tasks/projects this week and slightly into next week if need be.
