Week 17 -A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education. -Smiley Blanton, Pyschiatrist-

While we had the computers, I thought that it would be a good warm-up for my students to research something they're curious about to get their brains ready to work.  I made a quick and short Google Form where they had to input their name, period, question, answer and the URL of where they found their answer and made it bit.ly on www.bit.ly/dispatchdos.  What I thought would take 5 minutes ended up taking the whole period for some students.  They just delved deeper into whatever they were researching.

There were questions that ranged from, "Why do we have eye crust in the morning? to "How do they get cranes on top of skyscrapers?"  I learned a lot about what the students are interested in and when they found their answers, I learned a lot of new knowledge.

This was an excellent diversion for many students, especially to those that don't do a lot of work in class typically.  Some students couldn't think of something they wondered about so I began to just show things that make me curious on the Internet through some of the cool things I follow on Google+.

I showed them a street performer that was a Trasnformer that went from a Hummer to a robot.  I showed them a gif of Alaska when they have 24 hours of sunlight.  I showed them the Aurora Borealis in Iceland.  I googled, "Are there Spanish tongue twisters" and proceeded to try to say them.

All-in-all I think that this was a good exercise, because a lot of my students aren't curious about things and they don't wonder why something the way it is.  I'll need to do this more.

Meanwhile, on the project front, students are working and blogging away, although not all students are keeping up with this part.  I'm not sure if it's because they're not working on their projects, or they are finding it difficult to blog.  I'll have to look into that a bit more as well.

Until next time.