The Learning Project at St Mary’s

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My daughter and I just had a look through her Bebo site (social networking). We checked that there was no identifying information on there (there was!) and who was hanging around.

This is not a fear post about the dangers of 50 year old men pretending to be 12 year old girls. She told me how people seem so much more polite online than at school. This was surprising. People who usually don’t have much to say face to face are happy to engage in conversation through Bebo or MSN.

I’d love a crystal ball to see how social networking will be leveraged into learning in the future. It is not a matter of if, but how. Shouldn’t we be thinking in terms of possibilities and potentials, instead of only risks and dangers?

 Yesterday, Jacob and I watched his older sister compete in the NSW finals of Tournament of Minds – a great challenge based competition for teams of students across age groups.  According to their website ” Tournament of Minds is an opportunity for students with a passion for learning and problem solving to demonstrate their skills and talents in an exciting, vibrant, and public way.”  The passion of the young people solving these problems is palpable, and engagment with learning is through the roof!

Makes you wonder if problem based learning would solve many of the engagement problems teachers report having in their classrooms.  Boys, in particular, love the idea that their work will produce something real.  Many schools around the world have embraced Problem Based Learning (PBL) as their entire curriculum including New Tech High School in California, Eltham College in Victoria and Canningvale in WA.  In these schools, the problem IS the curriculum.

With such powerful technological tools at our disposal, it seems a waste not to employ these students and their computers, phone and iPods in collaborative activities that confront real world problems and create real quality products and solutions.

That’s what the Tournament of Minds teams do every year.  Congratulations, Rebecca.