Time in the classroom passes quickly. Sometimes, despite your best efforts and preparation, there are unwarranted distractions, or too many students to connect with individually. Sometimes, we need a way to engage with our students after they have left our classrooms. This is one way a carefully integrated mobile learning strategy has proved to be so successful at Shepparton High School. Take ‘Geared’ for example. Here is its story…
Our 8A Science teacher has used the iPods in Science classes for some simple activities such as vocab lists in the notes. It is not until she has recently been supplied her own iPod touch that these ideas are now beginning to expand. What a wonderful opportunity now all the PL team have iPods to start applying ideas to their classes as well as my own. So in Science, they are studying machines and gears. I recalled seeing a review of the App ‘Geared’, so we purchased it today and loaded it onto the kids iPods. 80 levels of gear arrangement challenges to connect with learning beyond the classroom, of the students own choosing.
OK, great, but what else? It just so happens that our Science teacher’s daughter has a shiny, new tandem bicycle, with the most interesting arrangement of gears. The perfect thing to demonstrate concepts and engage, but how to get it into school? It just so happens I have two fit daughters myself, so we hatched a scheme, without prior consultation, to ask if they would kindly volunteer to ride the bike into school together in the morning. To seal the deal, while they were pontificating over the embarrassment level this would generate in town, I casually picked up the phone and called the editor of our local paper to see if someone could come out and photograph them on their way in the morning. No problem, of course, a nice photo and story in our local paper about learning and its somewhat unusual manifestations.
An unpopular mother 
A search provided a couple of great videos explaining the gearing on a tandem bicycle and some simple gear concepts demonstrated with Lego. These were combined into a playlist and uploaded to the class iPods. Here is one.
The next day…
The journey was made successfully this morning, about 10km in all. The only issues with the tandem were negotiating the pedestrian access to the railway crossing, which is somewhat of a maze and also the bottom 10cm of the riders’ trousers being shredded by the gears as it wasn’t deemed cool enough to tuck them into socks.
Some of 8A also brought in their own bikes to compare the gearing, but they loved the tandem of course and many had a go. The new geared App was discovered on the iPod touch, and it was a challenge during the day to see how many levels could be completed. There was no time to watch the movie clips today in class, but no doubt they will be viewed on the bus on the way home and maybe even shared with the extended family in the evening. I am sure 8A students will always remember the day they learned about gearing; the tandem and the part the iPod touch played.
You can’t do that on a netbook.
