Week Three Workshop Reflection

This workshop began with an introduction to the ‘Design Brief.’ Whilst working in a group, we were given a small piece of cardboard, a picture of a frog, an elastic band and a small portion of tape. Together and with the use of all resources; we were asked to produce a mechanism, which would allow the frog to potentially jump. Conducting this simple exercise within the classroom has the capability of allowing students to develop diverse ideas and predominantly ‘think outside the box’ whilst working within a group and showing respect to the opinions of others.

By signing up with a website named ‘Quia,’ we were provided with a thirty day trial account where we had the ability to create a variety of quizzes within the online website. Quia not only gives you the flexibility to create and solve your own variety of quizzes, but also gives you the opportunity to search millions of quizzes created by educators all around the world.

The print screen above is a snap shot of a multiple choice quiz I created in the workshop. It was great to have the preference of selecting options such as how many questions I would like to create and whether or not I would like my quiz to be timed and for how long.

I believe implementing such an exercise within the classroom could be highly beneficial for both the teacher as well as the students. Such an activity has the capability of being incorporated within any topic of the classroom. This notion forces children to create questions in which they predominantly have to answer themselves. With the flexibility of this task, an incorporation of a research activity can also be introduced to the students. Allowing students to develop their own quizzes enhances their information technology skills such as typing and develops writing skills with the inclusion of grammar and punctuation. The notion of producing questions and answers furthermore enforces the use of question marks and important question words such as who, what, when, where and why.

With a given time frame of completion, students can then be given the opportunity to have a wonder and attempt the quizzes of students within the classroom. This additional activity furthermore creates interaction within students in the classroom.