Up, Up, And ..No, Stay!

In this picture, I am attempting to create a bowl of the perfect weight to lift a balloon up a certain height. The top of the balloon must reach the goal height, without then floating above it. Also, the bowl cannot be so weighed down that it rests on the ground and the string is long enough to have the balloon float at the right height. The bowl must be in the air.

This activity taught me a lot about trial and error, because I bet it was IMPOSSIBLE to solve this on the first try, and probably couldn't even be done within the first ten. There was not really any objective, textbook science to it. We had to do quick guess measuring, but not of technical and official objects-but froot loops and sequence.

This could relate to Nature of Learning because the different parts of the goal were covered. Our common sense came in handy a lot, even though we were often proven wrong thanks to our false perceptions. I learned a lot about inquiry, and continually asking questions, but never being actually straightforwardly answered (say, by a teacher, verbally). Experimentation gave me my answers. Time was definitely a factor; we had a time limit, but were also given time warnings, but we had to manage our own time and be the organizers of that on our own (we were in groups of 2). Also, self-correction played a big role because when we made a hypothesis "I think this will be the right weight to make the bowl float" and it sank to the floor, we corrected ourselves immediately and moved on to another possibility. External criticism came a little from our classmates as we were "presenting", and also from Bobby who asked us what we could do to change our results. These elements- inquiry, time, self-correction, and external criticism are all major tenants of the nature of learning.

I think as a teacher I will make a point to let my children have free range of learning sometimes. I will not answer their questions, but let them "get in there" and learn themselves. Groupwork is a very positive thing in these situations, and the external criticism seems to have positive effects since all members have the same goal. I hope to show the children the nature of learning like I saw it in this way.