Authentic learning, defined as ''real life learning'' by Steve Revington, is invaluable in any teaching context but despite this it is often difficult to obtain (Revington S 2017). In order to achieve this teachers need to have a deep understanding of the technical content and also an understanding of how this content knowledge is used within society. This is a distinct advantage for myself and other students completing the GDLT as most of us have real world experience in using technical content knowledge in the real world. As an example of authentic learning in the science classroom students learning about various ecosystems and more specifically how plants live and grow. The council could be consulted to offer space for students to grow a variety of plants. Students could research the pros and cons of planting certain plants in certain locations, then plan out the vegetation of the space before finally implementing this plan themselves. This project could span multiple terms or years as students in a higher level of science analyse how the plants have grown and whether the successful the vegetation plan has been. This type of learning would no doubt increase student engagement as students enjoy getting out of the classroom and going out in to the community. Students would also appreciate the opportunity to be able to easily show off their work in the community.
Creating a quiz in powerpoint
Well this was a cool functioning powerpoint until weebly converted it and took away key functions and scrambled the layout but somehow if you download the file all the functions and layout returns to normal :S :(
Mindmapping
Wisemapping is an online brainstorming tool. Above I have completed a short brain storm for my GDLT course. The features of this tool are limited compared to a blog platform such as weebly but is easy enough to use for a simple brainstorming activity. This tool may be useful at the beginning of a group project where students list the various sections, tasks and useful links on the page and use the relationships tool to show interlinked activities. I would use this tool predominantly with junior secondary students and push senior secondary students towards more advanced planning tools such as Microsoft Project.