The last post...

Perhaps it is because i am (or was) personally invested in the material from my final presentation that i am going to spend half of this blog filling in some of the details that i did not have time to share.

Alot of you asked the question "how did you get involved in such a big project?"

Initially, the project began with a team of teacher's creating ONE central Hands on/Constructivist Project/Activity for each unit in the science curriculum. These pre-prepared projects were meant to be a starting point from which teachers could plan their units around. All projects were provided in digital format and teachers had the flexibility to change/adjust them to fit the specific needs or timing of their classes.

As the scope of the overall project increased we began to flesh out a over-arching framework for the course. This framework effectively linked minor concepts together and overall themes were tied together by the pre-prepared ideas for Major Projects and Hand on activity.

Graham mentioned in his AP Biology Presentation (which was well done i might add) that he was required to send in his course plan of implementation to be approved before his school was allowed to teach the AP Bio course. In essence, the TSAL programs) are my personal course plans for implementation for each level of the Thai Science curriculum. I understand that my personal thoughts and ideas for the plan of implementation are not the only right way to teach each course. In response to this, I tried wherever possible to build in wiggle room that would allow the personal skills, attitudes, and creativity of each teacher to shine through. This wiggle room, at times, was limited by the fairly strict expectations of the Thailand Ministry of Education and (i must admit) to some extent the suggestions for timing, projects, assessment which make up the TSAL framework.
In my opinion, the positives, (teacher support, performance, ease of transition, resources, accountability, etc) far outweighed the possible negatives.

But or course you know that's only my opinion...which is why i was curious to present to you guys!

Thanks for the positive feedback and respectful criticisms!



The end result,