The pictures below were taken today during Dr de Roo's Life Science class.  The students are working on group collaborative research investigating sugar using iPads.  Their research brief was as follows:

"Research the impacts of over-consumption of sugar with respect to malnutrition and its health impacts. Analyse information in the popular press, or any other sources, with respect to this form of malnutrition and make recommendations for change and improvement that can realistically be implemented."

 

The findings needed to be written in the format of a science research paper and then their recommendations presented briefly to the class.  

 

Expected outcomes: Students grapple with accessing vast quantities of information, they have to weigh the information and distill it, they further develop their academic writing skills and importantly they practice working together as a team.  All of this is done in the context of using, for them, a new technology.  They are learning how to access Google Docs on the iPad and how to share a document with each other (and their teacher).  Subsequently they need to structure their work flow to enable simultaneous research, writing and editing (since Google Docs allows simultaneous editing on different devices).  The expected outcome is not so much the finished product but rather the process taking place in class.