General Information Project Overview Curriculum Connections Resource Connections Evaluation

  General Information

  Project Overview

This project will satisfy curriculum requirements of both Geography 3202 and Computer Technology 3200. Students will be given a topic to research, using the library resources and internet resources. Information will be collected on topics covered in chapters 10, 11 and 12 of the Geography 3202 text book. This course requires that students study, in depth, a minimum of three regions or countries. This exercise would be used to enhance their learning by making more resources available. Due to scheduling, all third level students that are in Geography 3200 are in Computer Technology 3200. Students will use class time in Computer Technology 3200 to collect the information from the internet and to create multimedia documents in Hypertext Markup Language. When the project is finished, students will receive a grade from Mrs. Kavanagh on content. Mr. Cook will give a grade on technical merit. These pages will then be assembled into a homepage on enrichment for chapters 10 to 12 in World Geography 3202, which will be posted on the internet as a resource for other students and teachers.

  Curriculum Connections

Main curriculum areas addressed:

The project will help to achieve curriculum goals in Geography 3202 and Computer Technology 3200. Actual intended learner outcomes, listed under provincial learner outcomes for these courses, can be found later in this proposal.

Aligning the project with the school's overall curriculum goals: One of the overall goals of St. Lawrence Central High to show students a holistic approach to education by interlinking course where possible. This shows students that their courses do not represent mutually exclusive domains but elements of a human knowledge base that is interdisciplinary when it is applied to problem solving and goal resolution. This is an excellent opportunity to exercise that interest and allow the students to gain practical experience in combining two different domains of knowledge to achieve a common goal.

Relating intended learner outcomes to provincial learner outcomes for:

Geography 3202

Computer Technology 3200

Data Retrieval And manipulation

 students will retrieve data from the Internet, process it and publish it in their own web
   page.

Operating System Management

 students will share their information by posting their pages in shared directories on the
   LAN. Students will also access the internet through the LAN and manage resources
   that they collected, on their own home directories in the network drive.
 students will be creating their own graphical user interfaces, by designing their
   hyperlinked pages in such a way to efficiently and effectively present information on
   their assigned topic.

Advanced Programming Applications

 some students will take that information and, for further enrichment, create
   presentations using QuickShow Lite
 some students may also write simple QBASIC programs that quiz students on the
   information collected. These would be posted on the finished homepage for other
   schools to download.

The following intended learner outcomes for Technology Education, as defined in "Living In A Technological Society", will be addressed:

 "explore and develop an understanding of ... network and other communication
   systems; demonstrate an understanding of new an emerging communications systems.

 "explore, analyze, plan and devise products and systems which communicate
   visually,... through analog and digital forms of...graphic, video other means;"

 "incorporate knowledge, concepts and problem solving strategies form other
   disciplines in solving technological problems"

 "employ a broad range of communications tools, techniques, and processes;"

 "produce solutions using visual, acoustical, telecommunications, networks..."

 "develop and adopt strategies to employ communications technologies in building
   new knowledge form existing information"

 "develop proficiency with a variety of communications technologies and tools"

 "demonstrate understanding of how information and communications tools are used
   to access information, to evaluate and select information appropriate to the need, and
   to create, modify and disseminate information;"

  Resource Connections

Stellar Schools Internet Connection will enhance this project by firstly making it possible for our students to connect on the internet and post their processed information products on the internet. It will be used in conjunction with library resources, to allow access to more recent information and allow student to direct their own learning as opposed to having their direction restricted by an ever-dwindling amount of relative written material. Students will also learn to selectively choose information form the internet and the library will serve as a credible base to check information that they gain online.

  Evaluation

Students will not be evaluated "checklist style" as suggested by the proposal. Since the main goals of this project are to interlink two domains of knowledge to achieve a common end and to expose the students to new methods in achieving this end, the project will be graded separately by each teacher. The Computer Technology Teacher will grade the technical merit of the student's HTML project and the Geography teacher will grade the student on the collecting of relative information and the processing of it into an appropriate knowledge based product.

Attention will also be payed to the student's negative or positive reactions to this methodology and any improvement or decline in performance in each course. This will be evaluated by a students questionnaire at the end of the project and the teachers own judgement on the project's merit to the learning process. These will be combined to allow teachers to make future decisions on approaching instruction in this manner and to provide a base of previous experience to make any future projects even more successful.