Readings for 'The Elderly Challenge' in Semester 2 for ADMT

Here is the first set of readings for ADMT's 'The Elderly Challenge' in Sem 2.

Environmental Challenge: Developing Essential & Guiding Questions

As a team, continue working on your Environment Journal to complete the following tasks:

1. List about 3 or more questions that your team have deemed to be important that needs to be uncovered, based on your previous works on your concepts maps and research
2. Rank these questions, and identify the ONE Essential Question that your team would like to highlight as a good challenge to uncover in your research. The notes at the bottom of this blog post are some guides to what is defined as an Essential Question (EQ).
3. From the selected EQ, work on developing a few (3 to 6) Guiding Questions (GQ) that would help you in your research further.

I would explain further on the work required in class later.

Notes on EQ:

(taken from: http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso?artId=53)

A question is essential when it: 

1. causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content;
2. provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions;
3. requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers;
4. stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons;
5. sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences;
6. naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

Environment CBL: Report on 'Strategies for Sustainable Growth'

Here is a useful report that was prepared for our Prime Minister on the strategies that Singapore would need to adopt in order to ensure her sustainable growth. There are useful information on the topic of 'Energy Conservation' that you might want to glean and refer to as part of your project work on the CBL theme of 'Environment: Energy Conservation'.

Week 5: Group task for the day...

Essential Questions on 'Energy Conservation' for today:

• Why is 'Energy Conservation' important in this day and age?
• How can you and your team adopt workable solutions for this theme and communicate them effectively?

As a team and using the above as a guide, work on coming out with more questions that you think your team would need to work on in uncovering an even deeper understanding of the theme on 'Energy Conservation'

Group Work (30 mins):
The following exercises are to be done in your Group Journal:

Activity 1: 
Based on the Graphic Organizers and Mindmaps that your team members have produced individually in the previous lessons, choose 8-10 questions that your team would like to shortlist for further consideration

Activity 2:
From the list of these 8 to 10 questions, select (and modify) THREE questions as your team's ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS (EQ's), and the questions that your team would like to uncover in your project. Please indicate the modified EQ's into your team's journals.

Activity 3:
From Activity 2, rank and select these 3 questions, in order of importance, so that you and your team can work out in greater detail the question/s that you are trying to uncover in your projects.

Individual tasks for the day...

Individual work (15 mins):
Work on uncovering your basic understanding of 'Energy Conservation' by mindmapping your answers to the following questions on Mind Node, or any other mindmapping software.

• What do you mean by 'Energy Conservation'?
• Why is 'Energy Conservation' important?
• Who do you think is responsible for it?
• Where do you think are the possible areas for one to adopt 'Energy Conservation' practices?
• When would it be a good time for one to adopt 'Energy Conservation' practices?
• How can one understand more on 'Energy Conservation' practices?

Once you have completed the mindmap, export it as a graphic file and place it into your personal ADMT blogs as a blog post, with the title: 'Initial view on Energy Conservation'.

Input your URL to the blog post in the 'Comments' section of this blog post.

The Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) Framework

The diagram below shows the CBL framework that would be adopted as we move forward in tackling 'The Environmental Challenge: Energy Conservation' in Semester 1.

Framework on CBL

Source: http://ictedservices.typepad.com/icted_services/2009/10/challenge-based-learning-professional-learning-module.html

Introduction to Challenge-Based Learning (CBL)

Here's an introductory clip to CBL...