Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Journeys of Medical Missionary

This morning was stunning! A team of 8-10 year old students had an amazingly bouncy experience, 'live online', with special guest Jo Gundry.

Jo Gundry's a medical student in Tauranga NZ, who's life (between studies) is devoted to voluntary work in third world areas. She's hugely passionate about sharing the experience had in Indonesia last year and became the most outstanding 'Guest' today, that Learn-Now has had in its seven years of operation.

Going 'live' in our workroom (synchronous chat) facility, saw 12 experienced Learn-Now elearners and 11 elearning novices, take her on. Their mission? To inquire after all that she represents, applying their questioning skills, while learning a little more about specific detail and information gathering.

From 'is there punk rock music there?' to 'what's the economy like', Jo Gundry's fingers were smoking in response! Her responses certainly had that 'Wow Factor' - a tag being immersed in all Learn-Now programming this year. Reactions in the computer suite hub, heard the 'No Way! No toilet?' cries, through to 'Oh - no electricity, so of course, no electric guitar'.

Influx vs drip-feed... There was also the reality check for the students, on behalf of the presenter, pertaining to managing an influx of questions vs the drip-feed approach, and avoiding the repetitive nature (ie food being the hottest topic). But such is the nature of learning to work collaboratively and the best use of a community environment. Adopting multi-tasking habits took ahold too, and within moments, the discussion forum almost drowned in a new wave of threads. While Jo was given the go ahead to take up to a week to respond (poor soul's also got an assignment on the lymphatic system to do), just about all was responded to within the next hour.

Journey's of a Medical Missionary launched this week, as a wonderful programme of insight, adventure and problem solving. It's open to elementary, primary, intermediate and middle school students around the world. There's a competition about to launch for the students involved, discussion topics, mind-bending challenges (eg: sterilise some dirty water, fit to drink), and mini case studies. One team enrolled will also bring their whole school on board to be partners in the same journey.

But wait...there's more...
Operation Orphans and One People, One Planet are about to be affiliated partners in this work.

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