Week 3 Design Briefs and QUIA website (games, activities and quiz creation)

This week we were introduced to the concept of design briefs. It was an interesting process, as it was not only fun and engaging, it also had the potential to be used as a higher order thinking exercise. This last part was important; without it it became simply a diversion.

We were encouraged to use a cyclical process of whereby we investigated, designed, produced, analysed and evaluated a design. It was cyclical in that the evaluation stage could lead to further investigation, and the process would repeat, until a successful product was produced. Such a process indeed did employ higher order thinking; we were not asked to simply recreate someone else's product, thereby employing some fine motor skills, but by being asked to design and then critically evaluate our design, meant we needed to think about alternatives and solutions.

The design we were asked to come up with was how to make a 'frog' jump. We were given some materials (a picture of a frog, a piece of cardboard, some sticky tape, and a rubber band). We had to use all of the materials; none could be left out.

The cyclical process lead us to make improvements. Reflecting on the rest of the classes work also opened new possibilities.

Design Briefs can be an introduction to science, which is critical if we are going to develop our primary school students into potential future scientists!

See the attached Design Brief, and the resultant video of our frog jumping!

Part 2 - QUIA website

With the QUIA website we were introduced to a particularly useful resource, one that allowed us to produce quizzes, activites and engaging games for the students to access via the computer.

I had never imagined that this sort of stuff was available to us! It was so easy to produce a quiz, and it was a highly engaging learning process for the teacher as well; producing a quiz or a game meant we needed to really think about the subject matter.

The QUIA website was easy to access; it required subscription, but allowed a 30 day free trial. This is something I would be happy to pay for as a teacher; I would then be able to keep the resources I had acquired rather than lose them every 30 days!

We created a user name and password, and then were able to create quizzes, activities and games. This is an example of a quiz I produced on snakes:

http://www.quia.com/quiz/2514035.html

Anyone can then do the quiz.

We then created a new activity – hangman. This can be adapted in case there are some students who are sensitive to hangman.

http://www.quia.com/hm/668205.html - link to hangman

http://www.quia.com/ba/410304.html - link to battleship

This is just one example of a site that produces games and activities. There are apparently many more, however, this one seems as good as any, so I think I'll use it in future.