What happened today?

So, I promised from the start that I thought these posts would get shorter as we went a long. I am trying to focus on what things that are new that each day brings in the interests of sharing the ideas and resources

Exams cancelled - As I said above - another day, another set of exams cancelled. A good deal of today was spent thinking about what, if and how we might be able to do anything for students. I have a few ideas, but I'll let them take shape before I write them down and regret it! I know some students might ultimately end up worse off because of this and I really feel for them. I know others will be feeling deflated and disappointed. I know lots of them don't know what to feel yet and its early days, but lots of them have been spared what are traditionally some very stressful moments in their lives. I think perspective will prevail. It is a bigger challenge to help them all to use their gained time well, which is complicated given the current lock down!

Feedback from Manga High - Just to say that so far, feedback has been pretty good! I am pleased I set it up and look forward to making use of it over the next couple of weeks. The folks at Manga High will be pleased to know that I went to look for the pricing structure today....

Making cones - This is one of my favourite lessons ever so I was pleased to have the chance to see how it would go virtually! The video below explains why I like it!  Making Cones 

I reduced the size to A4 paper, base radius 5cm and heigth 12cm - the proportions work welll, because it is still a challenge to get it all out of one piece of paper! We got lots of good photos of the finished cones and I know students were helping each other out and solving the problems along the way. I got a few calls during the lesson and was able to make a few images to throw in the chat as well. It is my feeling that lesson went at least as well if not better than it would have done in my classroom where I know that some students would have done less! 

More collaborative stats! - Poor students - I am so happy with this that I am going to be doing more of it. Today I set students up with an old database that was compiled for an Internal Assessment about Political Stability and set them off working in groups to explore the data base. Again, I have the whole class working on the same google doc which makes it brilliantly easy for me to follow what is happening. I know they are having calls in their groups and that they can dial me in when they need me and I can see the output. It is definitely a moment when the circumstances have forced me to think differently and the result is something I know I will use again. I am also pleased that students are doing something of genuine use for preparing for Intrenal Assessment as well as breaking up the pattern of lessons again.

Here are the questions I asked today - more to come tomorrow

So for the next two lessons, we are going to be working with this data base about Political Stability index. Below are the tasks that you should work on as a group… as yesterday (see your group section on the document outline view

Task 1 - The data - Have a look at the database together and have a chat about what you think it all means.

• Give a brief summary of all the data headings and say what they mean and how they are calculated.

Task 2 - Making Hypotheses. So what stories do you think this data might have to tell? What investigations could we carry out to find out. This is nicely speculative - you just get to write about what you ‘think’ might be the case and why? Then you test it...

• What differences might you expect to find between the different income groups and why? How might you test for it?
• What about the different continents? Would you expect to find differences there?
• What other hypotheses might you make about this data?
• What difference, if any, do you think population might make?
• What link do you think you might find between gun ownership and homicide rate? How do you think that might be related to political stability? Why?
• What about the link between literacy rate and political stability 

Task 3 - Political Stability in different parts of the world - For this part, you might need to make reference to this page on studyIB about how to use excel to do these calculations…. You might need to make a copy of the data..

• Work out the mean average political stability for all the countries in Asia, then for all the other continents and make a little table that shows the differences. Comment on anything you observe
• Now do the same for the different Income groups. This time, include the standard deviation and comment on any differences in how spread out this data is...

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