Imaginative Bridges - 2

The graphics and photography module has a direct bridge towards creating a Compelling Educational Experience in the classroom.  In today's mass produced education we are forced to do more with less and to cover a curriculum that is sometimes a "Mile Wide and an Inch Deep."  In such an environment it is hard to do much more than gloss over or introduce a topic.  In this module we looked at focusing on one object, simplifying and/or getting rid of the clutter.

In the photography module we also changed the photographs perspective to create interest.  Changing the camera angle or the photographers position often created a better photograph.  The same can hold true in the classroom.  Rather than directing from the front of the classroom to a row of desks we can change the arrangement of the room to get different interactions from our students.  We can move our selves into the class and work with teams of students to discover new things rather than lecture from the front filling our students with lots of testable facts.

Working together and creating new knowledge, a knowledge that comes from discovery as opposed to lecture can help to create a lasting knowledge and understanding that students may never forget.

Narrowing down our curriculum to one deeply involved topic that students are allowed to explore, feel, experience and then learn may create the life long learners we are all hoping to develop.  Rather than talk about history and historians let the students become historians and explore a topic in depth.  Rather than lecture about biology let the students become the biologist and study a life form that interests them in depth.

It soon becomes more than the topic itself.  It becomes a journey of learning and exploration.  My class started out wanting to build an underwater robot or ROV.  That has expanded into buiding an ROV to compete against others.   It then evolved into building and operating an ROV to look for airplanes underwater and then it evolved into using the ROV to not only find the missing airplanes, but to find the missing aircrews.  And, along with that they learn history, geopolitics of the Pacific and about oceanography and geography. Not to mention fundraising, marketing and budgeting.

Above are my new students and Rev. Lew Towler a US Navy veteran of WWII and Peleliu.  He will be traveling with my students and I this spring to the Republic of Palau as we search for another missing aircraft.  Lew wants to go with the students as we tour the Battlefield on Peleliu.  Lew landed there with the SEABEES on D+3, or September 18, 1944 and spent the next year there as part of a SEABEE Battalion working on the airfield and port facilities to support the Marines ashore.