So, got a chance to look at the MILI wiki a couple of days ago and spotted the Research Project Calculator (RPC) for the nth time since reviewing the wiki.  Thought I'd dig deeper with it this time as the sequence of Question, Gather, Conclude, Communicate, & Evaluate matched up with ongoing conversations my interdisciplinary team has been having.

We had been discussing interdisciplinary projects for the 4th quarter and vacillating on a topic. Our Social Studies teacher then suggested that we focus on identification of all the skills we want students to be proficient with as critical thinkers and then backwards design our curriculum so that we were all using the same language to explicitly teach these skills and use them as performance goals for students to strive for.  Not super revolutionary other than the common language bit to use with our common students.

Once we had discussed and listed these skills I found that they reminded me very much of the inquiry process in science and in PoL's Discipline Literacy.  Which brought me to look deeper into the RPC.  I really liked the 3 Questions activities as it gets at a skill missing in many of our students, matches up nicely with several of the critical thinking skills mentioned above, and allows explicit teaching of the way we think.

So, matching this up with technology and Web 2.0.  I could see using a Smartboard to document classroom conversations surrounding the Questions activities.   Saving them and publicizing them on a wiki and then having students continue the conversations about types of questions and how to research them would be way cool.  I know the Smartboard is supposed to be able to recognize handwriting and convert it to a printed form.....has anyone done that?

I want to spend some more time looking at the rest of the RPC and bring some of their ideas into my on-site team discussions.  That among the other items I need to check off for myself and my MILI involvement over the next few weeks left.  Until then.....

Later.