Week 3 - Design Briefs/Online Games/other, etc., so forth and so on...

So. Today we are looking at design briefs. I really don't know what the hell they are - luckily we were given paper and information and all sorts of other assorted niceties so I was quickly up to speed.

I am reliably informed that this is the old system of designing: 1. investigate, 2. design, 3. produce, 4. evaluate. That seemed all nice and lovely to me, but apparently it is insufficient to the needs of the sorts of people who involve themselves with design briefs. These aforementioned 'sorts of people' have opted, now, for the following: 1. investigate/design, 2. produce, 3. analyse/evaluate. That's all well and good. But I don't really understand the problem with the old system given that 'analyse' is more-or-less a synonym for 'evaluate' under these circumstance. Never-the-less!... it appears another addition to the newer system is a 'cycle flow' thing that encourages the sorts of people who involve themselves with design briefs to return to investigate/design and undertake the whole process again. Something. I haven't had enough coffee.

Um. My group completed a hard copy of the design brief for the jumping frog activity so unfortunately for you you cannot see it here. However, luckily for you I took pictures with my horrid little mobile phone of the whole escapade. The challenge now is to see whether or not I can get these pictures from the phone to my blog - without the phone deciding to chuck a tantrum. Let's see...

Looks like it's working! That's a photo of Chris preparing for jumping frog launch...

And that's a photo of me holding our jumping frog which was an absolute failure! In my defence, I'm pretty awful with my hands and so forth. Everyone's frogs were much better than ours. It was highly embarrassing.

Despite it all, these sorts of activities do seem incredibly useful. I'm not especially kinesthetically skilled and I'm always thinking of ways of teaching to those who are. These sorts of activities can help, I would imagine. Even the design brief process is no doubt a great way to encourage teamwork, higher order thinking - even literacy skills!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddddd... we move on the this website. It's called Quia and you can make all sorts of lovely little quizzes on it - also games and the such. And so we did. I made one. Although the website seems to have deleted it, for some absurd reason - but it's ok, because it seems everyone else's quizzes and games have been deleted too. It seems Quia just hates everyone. Good for Quia.

Anyway, I began by making a quiz about classical music - because that's what I know. We all had the opportunity then to try out eachother's quizzes. I thought mine might be tough, but it was nothing compared to Sarah's traditional spelling of Scottish words quiz! Wowzers, Batman!

Um. Then I tried hangman. I do appreciate that Quia has options apart from a man actually being hanged, because that might be utterly inappropriate in some schools - for example, the school I was on placement at! Incredibly inappropriate given the histories of the students at the school. So, yes, be careful with hangman is the story of the day.

But, yes, Quia appears to be a useful tool for the classroom. Fun, yet also opening up avenues for the reinforcement of content covered in class. I could see students taking and making games and quizzes on Quia, for sure. The only problem would be, obviously, Quia's deleting of these games and quizzes after some time.

Ok. That's it for now. I'm going to get some coffee. I leave you with a picture of a LaTrobe duck I took on my mobile phone while walking to today's lesson. Bye!

(My photographic skills are finely honed.)