Term 1 and 2 Reflections and Next Steps

Our Collaborative Knowledge Building Sessions for Term 1 and 2:

Lego Rubber-band Cars (Term 1 and 2): 

Starting in Term 1, and finishing in Term 2 (due to the lockdown), we ran three separate rotations of a one-off Collaborative Knowledge Building session with a third of our entire class each time (approx. 18 students).  Students were asked to power a lego car using a rubber band with the provocation - What makes a difference to the distance a car travels?  As I (Kim) was a new addition to the project, I structured it around what I read from the library of experiences, and used an online claims board and critique that previous teachers had designed and trialled with success.

The constraints included identical bags of lego pieces provided for each group (with an inventory to check against), that the students were restricted to using in the first phase of open exploration; separate skinny demos of how to build a simple frame with the lego pieces (ensuring holes for the back axle), how the basic rubber band mechanism works, and pointing out how to work the different wheel attachment options provided (modified 2x2 plates with a pin holder underneath vs modified 2x2 plates with small wheel holders on both sides).

What became immediately apparent, was the varied (and limited) experience of the students in building and creating with lego. Very few students had experience with the principles of building ‘freestyle’ with lego, many telling me they usually built from the instructions, then either put the set on display, or would pull it apart to build it again.  Or, if they were more open to creative experiments, as opposed to reading and following instructions, they usually limited themselves to buildings, landscapes, static forms - not working mechanisms.

With this in mind, a few claims in both the first and second sessions in response to the provocation, were about making the car stronger:

• We claim that if you build a strong base and put the strongest wheels on the back it will go fast and further. We think this is true because when we tested it it went further and faster than it went last time. (71,100,116 cm) 

• We claim that you need more support on it so it doesn't collapse… We think this claim is true because when we tried the first time it didn't have enough support so it collapsed.

On realisation that this was indeed the case, my response in the third session was to trial giving a little more guidance in the skinny demo, so they’d at least have the basic concepts of how to build a sturdy frame to then innovate on that in response to the provocation.  

Consequently, as success breeds success, more groups achieved collaborative success in the third session (all groups building cars that traveled distances 3-4 metres by the end of the session), than in the first and second sessions where only 1-2 groups were (although all groups were able to make their cars improve in distance over the course of the session).  There was more evidence of open exploration, innovation and willingness to trial and error in the third session, as kids ‘caught the bug’ of modifying their cars to make them travel further and further, then sharing and comparing their knowledge with other groups.

Motorised Fan-Powered Cars (Term 2): 

Continuing on with the car theme in Term 2, we again ran three separate rotations of a one-off Collaborative Knowledge Building session with a third of our entire class each time (approx. 18 students).  This time the students were asked to build a motorised fan-powered car using the materials provided to explore the provocation - What makes a difference to the speed a car travels?  This was taken directly from the library of experiences.

The constraints again included being restricted to using the materials provided, and a skinny demo of how to build a basic model (in which mine didn’t work because the fan kept hitting the ground at the back).

With more variables for this (compared to the rigidity of the lego cars), therefore requiring further refinement of basic construction skills  to build a basic model that worked, technical difficulties were inherent. This is evident in the teacher’s end of session reflections:

What happened as a result of the teaching in relation to the outcomes?

KIM (Session 4/Term 2) - Students were working better at modifying to make their models work, but not great at focusing on the original question - what makes a difference to the speed a car travels?  Even their claims weren’t really answering the question, discussing technical difficulties with trying to make it go at all instead.

Is there something I need to change? 

KIM (Session 4/Term 2) - All of the students chose the smaller A5 car templates today.  Not sure if it was due to my model being that size or not.  A little less imaginative in their ideas with the smaller cars, as they didn’t have to modify it as much to make it work.  Also, need to have the question on a whiteboard, and keep bringing their discussion back to it.

What have we discovered using the Line of Trust? 

A few impressions I had when conducting the line of trust during the 6 different conferences were:

• Some students were voting, or not voting, for a claim based on who had made it, and whether they trusted them personally.  Below is a perfect example, where two different groups in the same session made the same claim:

From this, I made the decision to remove names from the critiquing part of the online canvas and reporting time, keeping colours only to monitor all groups had contributed to the critique.

• Establishing consensus on the line of trust as a whole group didn’t always reflect differences in opinion.  Below is an example of two very similar claims within the same session, one even with three other groups supporting the claim and still it came out as a ‘one’ on the line of trust (meaning no trust at all), whereas, paradoxically, the second group came out with a ‘four’ on the line of trust (meaning all trust it) , yet with no supporting critique/claims.

This is where I can see where the ladder of inference would be far more accurate in reflecting the overall opinions of the whole group.  Unanswered questions, provisos, data could all be posted at the same time, validating everyone’s experiences and the data.

• Ranking of a claim on the line of trust didn’t necessarily feed into the next phase of open exploration - students would disregard claims with absolute trust rankings (4), and go with exploring the rankings that sparked the most interest, even if it got a 1 or 2 on the line of trust (little to no trust).  Examples of this were most evident with the motorised fan-powered cars.  Despite the questions, minimal supporting critique, refutation of the claim and a lower overall rank on the line of trust, nearly every group in the second phase of open exploration in this session tried adding more motors/fans to their models.

We think the Line of Trust might still have a place in the Claims and Critique phase of the Innovation Cycle, in that we could have students think, then physically move to a position with the expectation they will be called upon to justify their choice.  Throughout sharing and discussion time, we thought it would be powerful, and authentic, if we also created space for students to also change position when faced with more convincing arguments, and to share their justifications for doing so.  And for us to really examine as a group what it means to ‘trust’ or ‘distrust’ a claim, and what implications that has for us and further investigations.

How have our claims changed over time? 

In my first initial session (Lego Rubber-band Cars), I forgot to remind the students of the sentence stems to ensure there was some quality control.

• We claim that smaller is better because bigger is heavier and if you make a smaller body then the car will be lighter and faster
• We claim the bigger the body of the car the more stable it will be. We think that two rubber bands are more efficient.

In the second session, I remembered to remind the students to use the sentence stems, but their statements were quite simple and self-referencing.

• We claim that if you wind the rubber band back more it will go further. We think this is true because when we tried pulling it back it went further for us.
• We claim that  making the car longer helps the car go faster and longer. We think this is true because first we made the car short and then ‘L’ came up with the idea of making it longer so we did. It went faster and longer. 

In the third session, I prompted them to start including results from their own records, or their understanding of the scientific ‘why’ to support their claims. 

• We claim that if you pull back the wheels of the car back further, the further it will travel. We think this is true because our car managed to travel 3.9 meters by the force that ‘T’ pulled the wheels back.
• We claim that the lighter the car the further it will go. We think this is true because if the car is heavy it will take longer to travel a long distance and it will probably use all of the elastic energy.

In the second round of sessions (Motorised Fan-Powered Cars), the claims in each rotation were a huge improvement on earlier ones, despite many groups losing focus on the provocation asking what makes a difference to the speed a car goes and focus on what would make it work well.  They were more specific about why it would or wouldn’t work well in their claims.

• We claim that if you have three pairs of wheels/six wheels it helps to balance the car so it could go faster. We think this is true because when we only had four wheels it would sag down then wouldn't move.
• We claim that if you have a sturdy base/chassis it makes the car more able to be successful. We think this because we had an unstable base and the weight of the battery pack and fan were weighing down the ends and dragging the fan on the ground.
• We claim that the higher the motor is, the faster it will travel. We think this is true because our motor was too close to the ground and it was skidding on the carpet making it go slow.
• We claim that more motors would help it go faster. We think this is true because it has more fan power.
• We claim that when you put skewers underneath it will support the battery's weight. We think this is true  because when we did not have the structure  it fell through the cardboard. For example it would drag on the ground.

What is our plan moving forward? 

In discussing how the overall visibility of the online canvas seemed to encourage students to change their claims to make them different, just because someone else had ‘taken theirs', the concept of reliability in the Line of Trust dependent on who made the claims, and the delivering teacher’s perception of the format of the conference being very teacher-driven and lacking real engagement from the students in open discussion of ideas, we wanted to explore ideas for encouraging students to lead and do more talking.

Based on the concept of distributed ethnography, and real-time citizen engagement, we decided to explore the use of an investigative team of students (ethnographers) to observe and interview each other, and make claims based on their findings.  Before reporting back to the class, they’d come together to collate and synthesise the claims, facilitated and overseen by the teacher.  

Claim origins would need to be recorded for the purpose of returning for further investigation, to dig ‘deeper’, as well as providing the genealogy of ideas, for further innovation where we plan to create a final collaborative model bearing evidence of all the ideas from the different groups within the class group.

The investigative team will hopefully have the desired effect of removing emphasis on who made what claims, or groups changing claims because ‘someone else already wrote that’, and guide the students towards examining the content of the claims themselves.  In using students themselves to present the conference as well, we hope it’ll also provoke more open discussion amongst them all.  We think this might help move the teacher’s role more towards that of facilitator/ guide/coach, and away from the ‘leader up the front’.