This summer, NASA sent the Curiosity rover to Mars, and their video explaining the process is amazing. You can view it here. Obviously, many of the skills we want to teach our students (critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, communication, research, innovation, etc.) were involved in designing the rover and its transportation. Since 5th graders at Chamberlayne Elementary have been learning about the layers of the Earth (SOL 5.7), we tried designing a module for traveling to the center of the Earth. We had to figure out how to travel through each layer and what kinds of tools we would need to do the job without getting burned up or crushed. There are several sites students can use for research: Harcourt, Interactives, and a site I made. We started today by brainstorming ideas using a site called Clunic. Clunic allows anyone to share ideas and others can vote them up or down and make comments. You can see what we did by clicking here. After getting ideas and doing some additional research, students were going to get in groups and design a module. They could diagram it using online tools (like Kerpoof or DrawTo), or using programs on the computer (like Pixie or Keynote). They could even diagram it on paper if they chose. Then students could present their ideas by making a website using CheckThis or PageFin. I created a sample that you can see here.
