Rodmell Progress Report
On 24th July the class was provided with further information regarding the future of the Railway Land Local Nature Reserve (see www.railwaylandproject.org) and gathering final data in the form of pupil group interviews, a class forum and a stuctured teacher interview.
We are very grateful to Rodmell School for their co-operation and help in this first stage of the research.
A very good day with Peter Hodge, the entomologist, as can be seen by reading some of the pupil blog responses. This was an important morning in terms of thinking about the work of scientists through the eyes, words, notebooks and artefacts of a working scientist linked by the same piece of land that the pupils have been studying.
It is clear that the pupils need time to explore the software and to ‘play’ with it as well as getting used to the blog facility which they can use from home. The challenge now is to move from this interesting and important first phase to content and method.
One notable feature that has emerged in the early stages is the delight by many pupils to be able to work at their own pace and to ask their own questions.
One pupil, through a blog written from home, asked about the species of birds seen on the Reserve and this led to John Parry bringing in records of flora and insects surveys conducted on the Railway Land Local Nature Reserve over the last 18 years – some through the help of school children, now grown adults.
For several pupils, this was of real interest as they poured over the documents and for the boy who asked the initial question, it provided him with an opportunity to show his own knowledge about birds built on his observations around a neighbouring farm.
The challenge now is to move more into content and method, building on the skills the pupils have gained so far, and to that end the entomologist, Peter Hodge, will rejoin the group at their next session to answer specific questions and to pose dilemmas and further questions. The research will follow the pupils’ responses to this as well as the use made of Knowledge Forum software and its effects.
Good progress has been made on familiarisaiton of the software and adding photos to the text. One focus has been on adding more detail to the text by providing more examples or asking more searching questions.
It has become clear that a bank of re-sized and re-named photos ready for inclusion in the software needs to be created for use by the class.
Pupils and staff are still becoming familiar with the software but we have been impressed at the speed with which some of the pupils have grasped the core functions.
A visit by entomologist Peter Hodge on 12th July is expected to change the dynamic as he begins to add his own observations to points made by the pupils.
Finally, the class were shown how to create their own blogs in relation to the project and this facility is now available to them from any computer anywhere.
Two visits have been made to the Railway Land Local Nature Reserve and initial work has been directed towards the production of pupil-influenced teaching materials linked to another project called Living on the Edge which was launched formally on 23rd June. This foundation work, along with initial questions asked by the pupils, will underpin the Pupils as Scientists project which has now begun on a morning a week basis. The wider project and links can be seen at www.railwaylandproject.org
The first thing we have done is to load the original pupil questions into Knowledge Forum as a content kick-starter exercise to aid the process of pupils thinking about those questions more deeply. We also want to encourage them to begin to analyse the type of responses their original questions spawn. For example, does the question encourage a personal theory or establish the need to find out certain information or to understand better a certain aspect of the question?
Only by beginning to enter data, can the class start to get a handle on how the software works and the implications behind some of the questions they are asking.