BLU …

BLUThat’s the acronym for Borderless Learning and it has been such a thrilling ride. At times I wonder who’s doing the real learning because in every station I’ve participated in, I’ve learnt something.

Every BLU lesson is based heavily on activities. Each session is about one and half hour and you find the students engaging themselves in some form of activities for at least half an hour or even an hour.

That means there’s very little ‘teacher talk’. It’s all about the students discussing, experimenting, experiencing the lesson for themselves. I was looking at all the lessons and wondering why didn’t my teachers used to do this with us?

Just to give an example, there was a station to highlight the scientific method used in collecting data to substantiate a hypothesis. The station was called Scientific Mentos. And what the students did was to actually conduct a super duper fun experiment using mentos on soft drinks.

For the unintiated, you can click here to go have a look.So the students were supposed to find out whether different types of soft drinks, like normal sugar and diet soft drinks, have an effect on the height of the fountain created.

Just imagine 15-20 groups of students doing this along the drain. Of course it wasn’t just all fun. They really measured how high the fountain was and it was not easy to conduct the experiment. Every step was important to the success of the experiment.

But you can sense the excitement in the kids and their enthusiasm. That was the trademark of BLU.

I’ll have to admit I’m really proud of the students. I’m not exaggerating when I say they come up with very intelligent answers despite their age. I was at the back thinking to myself, “Would I have given that answer when I was 13?”

And I was extremely impressed and glad that some of my R6 were discussing the US Election with such enthusiasm and insight. It shows how much they read and how interested they are in the affairs of this world. That is important and one of the mark of an educated person.

All in all, SOTA’s been cool and great so far. I hear my colleagues saying they couldn’t wait to wake up and come to the school again the next day. And I hear the students saying that too. Hahaha. What a blast!

~ by Jae on January 13, 2008.