Activity One - Questioning and Planning (stages 1-2)
Raffles Girls School in Singapore
Activity Two - Gathering + Sorting & Sifting (stages 3-4)
Activity Three - Synthesizing, Evaluating (stages 5-6)Now that you have spent time gathering information about your criteria, stop to consider and organize your findings. Can you throw away material which is unhelpful? Rearrange it? Change categories? Condense? Work with your partner to figure out how much you have learned. Is the puzzle beginning to take shape? Are you able to make out any patterns? Try moving your information pieces around until some kind of picture emerges. You are looking for insight. Is Hong Kong safer than Singapore and Tokyo? Do you have hard numbers and evidence? What about the weather? Where will you see the sun most often? Where will you freeze and shiver the most? You are trying to "tease" meaning out of fragments. Synthesis requires rearranging particles and elements until a new version emerges. Evaluation is the stage of asking if you have enough to build a strong case. Do you have enough so that you and your partner can stand up and speak persuasively to this group explaining your choice and basing it upon solid facts and evidence? Your leader will engage the group in discussion before teams move to the next activity.
Activity Four - More GatheringMany students may try to find information on the "free Internet" using the search engines which look through millions of Web pages to see which ones contain certain key words. This searching can be very frustrating because it will often give you huge lists of "hits," many of which are irrelevant or untrustworthy. Today you will be searching for more information about your cities using the advanced version of Altavista after your workshop leader provides you with an introduction to Power Searching techniques. We hope you will evaluate the pros and cons of such searching and consider its worth for you and your own students. Following the lesson in Power Searching techniques, click here to go to Altavista and spend 30 minutes trying out effective search techniques. For reminders on search strategies, use the chart below . . . When the workshop leaders indicates that it is time to write answers to the questions below, return to your learning journal.
Activity Five - Reporting (stage 7)If you had plenty of time and were conducting this investigation for real, you would most certainly go back through the stages of the Research Cycle several times before making your presentation, but today we'll give you a chance to speak early . . . With more time, we might also challenge you to share your findings using a multimedia presentation program such as PowerPoint, but today we will keep it simple and focus more on content than flash. Write a few paragraphs summarizing your findings as persuasively as you can. Share your findings with the group. In what ways does this reporting process prepare students for their futures?
Activity Six - Discussion
Computer Lab in Singapore School
© 2000, Jamie McKenzie, These modules may not be duplicated, republished or distributed in any manner without the express written permission of Jamie McKenzie. |