At the moment I'm spending a lot of time investigating ways to add extra... depth to the traditional topics. At Key Stage 4 I'm often told by learners that they feel like they're simply rehashing what they did a few years earlier- hardly what I'd call progression. From my point of view we're not going to persuade our students that learning a language, and continuing to learn a language into post-16 and beyond, is really going to take them anywhere in life if they're constantly learning about more complex ideas in other subjects.
So when I saw a tweet from @unicef_es just now my interest was very much piqued. They've created a Facebook app to support fundraising for a school construction project in Zambia (form more details and to access the app see here). The idea is that users can play around with the interactive school buildings and think about what they see as being important in a school. Is it the teacher's desk that's important? The training that the teacher's had? The kit in the kitchen, the sporting equipment? What is it that makes a school... a school? Users can then "donate" those items which will be put in place when the school is built for real.
I think this could be a really interesting way to get learners reflecting on items in a school, what their ideal schools would be like, comparing different items, even reflecting on what makes a good teacher. I'm hoping that Unicef will keep updating their information on the project as if they do it could be a really rich source of information for teachers. After all, when studying about school we don't just have to look at our own.
