| The web has a lot of information available for teachers about seismology both at informal and at a scientific level.
The average student, who approaches the study of seismology for the first time, lacks direct involvement in the study and it often happens that the simple informal knowledge does not result in learning and formalization.
The teacher who wants to use web resources for the didactics, finds it is difficult to select information and adapt it to the school level, because of the short weekly time reserved for earth science studies.
The seismologist, who gives a lecture in the school, has difficulty to understand how much of the knowledge transmitted will pass to the students.
A way to solve these problems is to adopt the Community of Learners’ method, creating groups of different-aged students directly involved in research activities and in the production of learning material, using websites organized for web research, production and sharing of ideas, as Jigsaw methodology suggests.
The poster shown documents the experience I had with a group of students (aged from 14 to 18) in an Italian high school in Somma Vesuviana, near Naples. The method adopted is adaptable to any kind of technical-scientific issue. In this case seismology was the topic of the work group and thanks to the Community of Learners’ method, all the students:
-Started as apprentices, learning new things, questioning their knowledge, accessing new sources, using different channels and means of communication and debating with the others;
-Moved to the role of teachers, sharing their own knowledge with the others, and explaining their own discoveries;
-Became scientists specialized in something unknown to the other students, producers of new and original ideas to explain to the others who had different opinions and ideas.
Thanks to the Community of Learners, they all became apprentices, teachers and scientists. |