Landmines

Centennial (W) PS, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Teacher: Arnie Covey
Students: Scott and Kyle

1.  Learning Outcomes: The Landmines CD-ROM provides the user with an overview of the issues surrounding landmines. The highlights include the impact on victims, the types of landmines, demining, countries affected by landmines, banning landmines and why landmines are used . The CD contains animations, digitized movies and simulations.

2. Curriculum Connection: The students in Scott and Kyle’s class are selected because they have demonstrated the desire and ability to complete very complex and in-depth projects that reflect state-of -the-art technologies and allow students to take their learning outside the classroom. It is expected that each student will complete at least three independent projects and as much as a third of our time is spent working on these. 

3.Process:
a) The students work on their projects during class time. We split our day into rotary subjects, thematic units and independent studies. 
b) Scott and Kyle planned the CD and then created a list of tasks to be completed. They then kept choosing and completing tasks until the CD was completed. 
c) The students occasionally took the computers home to work on the project.  We preplanned the tasks through discussion and set goals concerning what they wanted to accomplish while they were working at home. 
d) The most difficult part of  the project was the copyright clearances particularly with the Cambodian Mines Action Centre who had difficulty with English and understanding what we wanted. The next issue was the loss of data from computer crashes (What’s a back-up?). 
e) We actually used your Multimedia Mania 2000 rubric to make sure we worked to the top level of your expectations. 
f) I was the mentor that helped solve problems and gave suggestions.  Sometimes I demoed ideas that they could use in the CD. I was also the timekeeper to make sure we were on track to finish on time and that we fulfilled all the requirements.

4.Accomplishments: a) The students learned that when you have a cause that you believe in, others will help you to complete your task. They have learned that something worth doing is worth doing well. They also leaned that persistence pays off and that hard work has its rewards both internally and in society. The students who completed this CD won an exchange to Newfoundland to share their CD.

b)   The students I work with never cease to amaze me. Their dedication, ability to work together, to share work, to take suggestions and evaluate them and finally complete this project reaffirmed my belief that technology is a powerful tool that can aid learning.

c)   The KISS (Keep it simple, Silly) theory works well here. What appears to be a project that one can whip together in a few months can take much longer. There’s always room for one more is another obstacle as we continued to add to the CD. This translates into setting a limit to what you want to accomplish.

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