Educational Weblog: PingWillauer Kayaks
I want to highlight a very nice educational blog project that Otter set up and has been hosting for the Willauer Outward Bound School here on Thompson Island.
Teachers Thad Foote and Darcy Hoyt organized a learning expedition that
involved building six kayaks and then auctioning off four of them for
the school fundraiser. We created a blog for the class. Darcy and Thad
gave all of the students posting rights, and throughout the semester,
this smart group of 8th graders used the blog to document the whole
process of building their kayaks.
The blog has proven to be a big hit. It provided a lovely window into
the whole building process and offered the students their own voices in
documenting what they were doing and learning. After following their
progress all semester, I would highly recommend this format for any
class undertaking an expedition or any other project-based learning
project.
The kayaks raised $8,000 at the school fundraiser, so they also
proved to be a lucrative project for the school. Congratulations,
Willauer 8th graders. Well done!
Links for PingWillauerkayaks:
A link from On Kayaks. This is a beautiful blog–a personal journal on a first year of learning how to kayak–had a post on the pingwillauerkayaks blog.
A link from Biology Daily, the Biology Encyclopedia, for the entry for kayak: http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/Kayak
