Jumping Frogs and Quizzes

In this week's workshop, we explored design as a learning tool. In pairs, we were given five things:

• Small piece of cardboard
• Picture of a frog
• 1 Rubber band
• Small amount of sticky tape
• Scissors

With these tools, we had to create a jumping frog.

This is what my partner and I came up with:

In our design, when you press down on the cardboard the frog is supposed to jump into the air.

Here it is in action:

Design tasks such as these aim to develop students' ability to use higher order thinking. When used in the classroom, it is important to give students a design brief so that they are given a set task and then utilise their own thinking to come up with a solution. Students shouldn't be told how to complete the design, but rather what their design must achieve.

QUIA

If students can develop their higher order thinking through creating, then the QUIA website is an extremely valuable tool for teachers. QUIA can be used by teachers to make quizzes for students, but I think the most valuable way in which the website can be used is by getting students to make their own quizzes. The ability to make their own quiz on a given topic displays higher order thinking and mastery of that topic.

Using QUIA, I made a quiz on bicycles:

http://www.quia.com/quiz/2514029.html

The website could be used to make a quiz on any subject, and there are a variety of formats and lengths of quizzes. The possibilities are endless, but one example of how it could be used in the classroom is for peer assessment. For example, at the end of an integrated sequence or unit, students could develop a quiz which would then be used to assess their peers.

The QUIA website also has many activity makers. Students (or teachers) can make their own learning activities which could be used in a similar way to the quizzes. Examples of the learning activities include:

• Matching games
• Flashcards
• Hangman
• Battleship
• Word Search

Using the program, I made my own hangman activity: http://www.quia.com/hm/668221.html