Robotics in a Flat World

I just returned home from the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, USA. Frankly I know very little about robotics and I’m merely a teacher chaperon for 6 kids, but it was indeed an eye-opener for us, particularly for my students.

With over 380 teams from all over the world, my students received valuable experience of communicating and collaborating with older students from other countries. We have heard enough of the essential 21st century skills but often limited by walls of classrooms. To learn these soft skills, this is the kind of flat classroom our students should be learning in. Obviously this flat classroom can also be achieved using Web 2.0.

Fun with Wallwisher

Wallwisher is a nice and simple tool I picked up during the ICT Mentor workshop. Great for students to brainstorm ideas, gather opinions and have some fun posting virtual sticky notes. I started 2 walls, one asking students to share their favourite school activities. Response was pretty encouraging with more than 20 stickies. Check it out here.

The second one in progress is “If there were no examinations,…” I asked students to complete the sentence. Check it out here. Initial impression is students’ mentality of the relevance of standardized testings is as deep rooted as parents and some educators.