Gaonomics

My daughter in year 5 has been working hard to compile enough information for her IPC class theme this term, which involves setting up a travel agency with different packages. The countries she is responsible for are USA, Canada and Hawaii. She is very excited about exhibiting the packages she has prepared and which will be on offer in her group’s travel agency later this week, which includes tours, accommodation, traveling to and from different places etc.

I think she has learnt more about searching on the Internet, finding relevant information and using websites and the interactive applications found on the websites, from this project than from any other previous projects or years of ICT lessons combined. She has learnt things about the three countries she didn’t know anything about and have read about places of interests and towns unknown to her, which has broaden her mind and interest in the world around her.

But that’s not all, she also had to figure out how much the different packages she is offering in her group’s travel agency cost and which airplanes fly from Malaysia to these countries as well as inbound travel between USA and Canada for instance and how much that cost. She has gone through websites to find this flight information by herself and calculated the cost of 2 people traveling together.

I have supported her initially to show her how to use keywords in Google to find good websites and her teacher has given her tips, but after this initial support, she has been on her own and managed quite well, although it has been challenging at times, as it is quite a mouthful for a 10 year old to having to think of all these components to be compiled and figured out, but also very educational and she has learnt a lot from it.

I am so happy that Tenby International School has implemented IPC fully as it really makes a huge difference in how the children learn and the excitement they feel from doing work that is taken from the real world around them. It makes it much more interesting for them to keep up the excitement about the project, as they are obtaining information that is relevant and they are learning skills that they can use again and again, skills my daughter will never forget and which will come in handy in near future when she is doing her next project. But it has also given her the ability to organise her own holidays in future, as she now knows how and where to find the right information, how to calculate the costs involved in traveling, tours and accommodation, look for places she is interested in visiting and plan her holiday down to every detail taking into consideration how to get there, accommodation, weather etc.

This is what education is about, teaching children thinking skills, how and where to find information and how to select, compile, sort and organise it in such a way that it can be used constructively and creatively in real life scenarios. And then making it fun and exciting at the same time, while offering the right guidance for the students to achieve the best outcome and learning objectives.

Imagine the many areas the students are covering from this project, from group work, to searching for information on the internet, compiling, selecting and organising, communicating their ideas and findings, thinking creatively how to present their holiday packages and market them, learning about other countries, calculating costs and so much more. It’s pretty amazing what can be done when the will is there.