The Teachers' Resource Base
The staffroom is where teachers can access specific support resources
available within the Solar School. These include:
The Solar School has been designed to help students of high school age explore
aspects of climate change. It has been developed around the requirements
of the Australian Curriculum Corporation's National Curriculum Statements
and Profiles, along with those of individual NSW high school syllabi.
It has also used work carried out by the Australian Association for Environmental
Education as the basis for its curricular framework. The cross-curricular
aspects of Solar School are central to its objectives. Our aim is to enable
students to see our role in the process of climate change in the context
of the development of Global Sustainability, both technologically and socially.
The Solar School explores climate change via a number of "virtual classrooms",
each of which concentrates on particular aspects. Samantha and Terry
(the Solar School's resident students) are included primarily to enable some
differentiation for younger students and for students of slower learning
ability. By following the cartoon characters through the classrooms, they
can obtain a degree of confidence in the subject matter, which can then
be built upon during "real" classroom work.
The first two classrooms ("The Greenhouse Effect"
and "Global Warming") explore the mechanisms of
the greenhouse effect, along with the causes, processes and
effects of climate change.
The third classroom ("Renewable Energy") looks in
depth at our use of energy, its effect on climate change and the
sustainable energy options available to us.
Classroom number four ("Little Bay") focuses on
photovoltaic electricity generation as one sustainable option. The
classroom is in fact a virtual tour of UNSW's research facility in Sydney,
and explores all the technology that is currently installed there, along
with some of the underlying scientific principles.
The fifth classroom ("the Virtual PV Power Station")
brings to life the concept of distributed PV electricity generation.
This classroom enables students to obtain live on-line data from a number
of PV systems across Australia, including Fort Street High School's rooftop
PV array in NSW and Monash University's installation in Victoria. By clicking
on the "Data Express" icon, students can choose from a range of real PV data
options. This can be used in a variety of classroom activities, and are
especially useful to enable the concept of sustainability to be integrated
into the Maths curriculum.
The classrooms are constructed as a collection of "pages", which explore
a number of themes. For example, the greenhouse effect and global warming
are illustrated by looking at our neighboring planets, or by exploring periods
such as the age of the dinosaurs or the last ice age. These can then be used
as starting points for the construction of schemes of work across a number
of learning areas.
In addition, the Solar School "Library" and "Projects" icons give access
to further Solar School-related resources. These include links to other web-sites
(which have been assessed by us for their suitability), access to on-line
projects (such as the sunshine measurement project - coming soon) and to
activity sheets, all or part of which you may wish to use in the classroom
- just cut and paste the parts you need from the web page into your own word
processor.
Each classroom has its own quiz, which students may enter by clicking on
the "quiz" tab at the left of each page. Alternatively, students may leave
the quiz until after reading through each classroom. They will then be guided
to the quiz from the last page. The quizzes are designed to allow for rapid
self-assessment "on the fly", and students are recommended to return to specific
pages if their scores are low.
Activities and Projects
The Solar School is designed around an activity-centred model in which students
are encouraged to learn by doing. The information pages contained within
each classroom are intended to act as starting points for class activities
or projects.
Sample exemplar activity sheets are available here, and are designed to be
used in part or whole, depending on age group or learning ability. Students
will usually carry out project activities as part of their class or home
work. These are usuallygroup activities, with the opportunity to facilitate
"virtual group work" via the Meeting Space
facility. As the Solar School develops, students may also add their
work to the Solar School web site to become a learning resource for fellow
students and teachers.
As teachers, you can also make your contribution by telling us about your
ideas for activities and projects. Please make your suggestions within
the Meeting Space, or e-mail us
directly.
A curriculum
matrix, based on NSW syllabi and National Curriculum Statements
and Profiles, is currently being developed. This will allow teachers to correlate
required outcomes in a range of Learning Areas with individual Solar School
activities. This approach can serve as a template for teachers to design
their own activities, which the Solar
School team would love to include in the site as a resource for fellow
teachers.
Student project assessment can be more challenging than the grading of typical
homework assignments or multiple choice tests. It is important that some
form of framework is utilised in order to ensure a standard approach to project
assessment. The Solar School has adapted the scheme of assessment developed
by the Learning Through Collaborative
Visualization Project (CoVis), part of the Learning Sciences Program
at The School of Education & Social Policy, Northwestern University,
USA.
Put briefly, there are two classes of outcome that lend themselves
to evaluation, namely:
- Project Products. The Solar School's activities and projects allow
you to utilise a range of classroom tools, including :
- written documents,
- drawings and physical models
- A final presentation
- Student Behavior/Activity. This can include:
- In-class work habits
- Interaction with peers
- Interaction with mentors
A set of general guidelines for quantifying project assessment are presented
in the form of
Sample
Assessment Rubrics.
Solar School is much more than an information resource. It is also a growing
national electronic learning network. It is intended to bring groups of students
and teachers together to work cooperatively on projects and activities. Anyone
with Internet and World Wide Web access can register with Solar School and
take part in team activities. Please
e-mail us for further details.
Link-Up consists of a number of communication resources:
- The Solar School Meeting Space
Based on a Web-based conferencing system, the Meeting Space consists
of individual folders dedicated to a particular climate change theme or project.
Students (and teachers) can discuss aspects of their work with fellow Solar
School participants across Australia by typing in their contribution. This
is then displayed in the relevant folder, along with previous and subsequent
comments.
- E-Mail
For quick communication and for the transfer of larger documents and
images between participants, e-mail is the most effective method. To contact
the Solar School team, or to get in touch with other participating schools,
please click here.
