Assignment+3

=Assignment 3: Prescription=
 * https://venture-lab.org/education/reports/9945 **

The selected challenge was looking for alternatives to providing enhanced scientific practical classes with the aid of some kind of interactive assessments or models in order to reduce costs as the school runs on donations. Technology was being considered to support the practical side of science. By using a partial webquesting basis, students would be able to engage with the inquiry process by using the internet to scaffold the development levels of understanding. Some activities would be completed off line and then the students would report back to the webquest to reflect and carry on with the questing.
 * Proposed solution: **


 * Learning topics and objectives: ** The guidance from the challenge was that to engage students with science, there should be interactivity to explore the samples/subjects, audio visual elements to support teaching, guided tasks with assessment and the solution should be sustainable (cost and reusable). My solution addresses these main points by providing students with the challenge of completing the web-based quest by using technology to guide, reflect and engage with the practical components in a combination of online simulations and videos (audio visual) and activities that support the real –world practical components. The webquest is reusable and free, as many science based simulations and videos on the web are available free to educators.


 * Students/trainees/audience: ** The teacher would be responsible for setting up the initial webquest, pulling together the necessary scaffold for the students and preparing the occasional real-world task. Students studying science should be encouraged to propose their own experiments and thorough the webquest process, scientific inquiry skills can be encouraged, thereby encouraging students to engage with the challenge (perhaps through social competition of who can finish first (leader board potential for each stage. etc). There is also room for students to determine a personal topic – using the webquest to guide them through the curriculum.


 * Environmental context/learning conditions: ** This solution fits with the brief supplied by the author of the challenge, given that the challenges can be competed on and off line, thereby making use of the available computers in a shared infrastructure. There is potential for students to work in groups, also reducing the number of students on the computer at once. By scaffolding the structure of the webquest, students could be at different stages of the quest – some completing online tasks while others are experimenting or producing art work etc off line, all in support of developing scientific enquiry knowledge and skills.