In Situ exploration

Just a quick recount of part of today's Higher lesson. I was at a Google education conference at the weekend and it served as such a good reminder of some of the simple things that can be done in class just to make learning more relevant. We were doing weathering, often not the most instant or interesting part of the lithosphere topic, and had already discussed types of weathering. I had been wondering where to go next with this to keep motivation and something Neil Winton had said at the weekend resonated with regards to getting students own devices into lessons and learning activities. This is something I used to be quite good at, but had lost confidence with a little.
Consequently, we had fifteen minutes of impromptu investigation today around the school grounds looking for evidence of the 3 types of weathering, biological, physical and chemical, recorded by photograph on mobiles with students free to move around and find their own examples. By the end of the lesson, I had managed to visit every working pair, check their evidence of comprehension via the photos and attempt to deal with any problems with the content. This isn't a major breakthrough in pedagogy, but its a nice way to evidence learning and was a toe in the water again for myself in terms of mobile learning.