On Thursday, March 24th, the Grade 10 Civics students visited the Ontario Legislature to participate in a series of engaging activities relating to what they’ve been learning in class. Students took a tour of the Legislative building, participated in mock passing of a new bill and visited the Chamber to observe parliament in session.
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The Grade 9 math class planted leeks, tomatoes, cucumbers, and chives today as part of a data collection and graphing unit. We will be measuring the height of our vegetables over the next few months and then planting most of the vegetables at Evergreen Brick Works in their community garden.
In today’s science lab our goal was to blast the lid off a film canister in 45 seconds. To achieve our goal we needed to take control of the rate of reaction. We altered heat, concentration and surface area.
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In order to explore the effects of technology on communication, the grade 11 Introduction to Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology class held a ‘virtual class’ today using webcams and Skype. The students presented their findings of their technological deprivation experiments, during which each student gave up a favourite piece of technology for three days to study the effects on their personal lives.
While there were a few bumps getting everyone up and running, students Ben, Raquel, Max and Jessie seemed happy with the overall results of having a discussion online.
Raquel said, “We now know that we are able to have a discussion over the internet, so if anyone is sick they can use this technology to get their work done.”
In regards to the possible downsides of having a virtual classroom, Ben said, “I felt weird during the discussion. This was because I felt like I was not really talking to people but more talking at people. For me it was hard to understand the others, this was mostly due to the fact that the internet was not very stable or fast. When I talked I did not know if I was being listened to, I could not make eye contact with people or see them respond to what I was saying.”
While the focus today was on group discussion, possible applications for the future include learning activities and presentations, and perhaps ‘Skyping’ in a guest speaker who otherwise wouldn’t be able to visit the school. Any volunteers?
Yesterday, part of the school went to Brickworks as Part of the Healthy Choices program, and participated in our first outdoor session. We had an invigorating afternoon outside learning about some of the native plant species on site, and learning how to make an outdoor fire – even in slushy, wet and wintery conditions. Brian and Michelle took us into the woods to collect appropriate firewood, showed us how to prep wood to make it usable for a fire, and how to build both a log-cabin and teepee style fire. We soon discovered that we had a few survivor men in our midst, as they worked diligently to start a fire despite the brisk breeze. Our afternoon was capped off with a warm cup of delicious cedar tea. Thanks to Brickworks for another great day!
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