Resultados Obtenidos

As the purpose of the Wonderlands curriculum was to replace the time spent on the Junior Certificate Journal it had been decided to design it around a research project. Inspired by what the literature identified as 21st century skills (Partnership for 21st Century Learning 2015), the project was designed to encourage critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. The aim of the curriculum was for students to create, communicate and collaborate to publish an iBook that celebrates places of religious significance. The first iteration of the curriculum was solely based around the student project as the focus was on students moving from consumers to creators of content. In order to ensure quality in my curriculum design and in my research plans I worked closely with my colleagues in the RE department and we piloted the developing curriculum with a number of class groups. This provided valuable feedback that helped improve and shape the curriculum. We encountered a number of problems and setbacks, but these were valuable learning curves on the research journey.

We couldn’t use the curriculum with our current third years as they were preparing for the Junior Certificate exam so initially we decided to pilot the curriculum with the year group ahead of them, a group of Transition Year (TY) students. A straightforward plan on paper became complicated in the midst of a busy school environment but from the limitations we faced we learned valuable lessons. We encountered two significant problems. First of all we did not have enough class contact time with them as the TY students only have two RE class periods a week. Furthermore, due to the unique nature of TY, students go on work experience, community care projects and a variety of trips throughout the year missing a number of classes. This made group collaboration difficult and slowed down our progress. The second factor was that this group did not have their own iPads so we were depending on booking the school set. We used the computer room instead for a lot of the research and mainly used the iPads for filming interviews. The biggest issue with using the shared iPads only became apparent when we discovered that they only had the free version of the Book Creator app on them and that it only allowed one book to be created. In the end the TY students had completed great research and created valuable original content but they were unable to complete the iBooks as we had planned. This was disheartening at first as I noted:

I’m very frustrated with the lack of progress at the moment. Everything seems to be going wrong. We have missed classes and when we had class some students were missing and some groups were left with only one or two students. The iPads are not always available when we need them (even though we had booked them!) and sometimes they are not charged. The free version of the app has caused confusion as it means each group has to use the same iPad each time as only one book can be created on them. One group said the work they completed disappeared from the iPad. Did they do it? Did they save it? Was it deleted? I don’t know but I do know this isn’t working. The project was supposed to be completed before the Easter holidays but they are here and no iBooks are completed. I’m going to use this much- needed break to try and figure out where to go from here (Journal entry extract, 02/04/16).

After I debriefed our first attempt with my colleagues it was reassuring to realise that the main problems encountered were due to factors that would not apply to the third year group the curriculum was being developed for, as we would have them three times a week and they would have their own iPads. Determined to see how the Book

Creator app would work in these conditions, I decided to use the app with the

second year students that had already agreed to be part of this research when they were in first year. As we were coming towards the end of the year time was tight so the research topic was narrow and confined to one that they had background knowledge on. They had studied Islam and learned about Mecca as a place of religious significance earlier in the year. It was decided that for the project they would work in groups to create a book about one phase of the pilgrimage. Each book would then be combined to create a class book. There were six phases, including the background and preparation phase of the pilgrimage so they worked as six groups of four. They had one class to research their phase of the pilgrimage, one class to create original content in any format they wished and one class to compile their chapter in the Book Creator app. My colleague Laura also did this with her second year class to provide further feedback on the experience. This second attempt at piloting the project encountered some minor problems but the outcome was much better than anything I had expected.