Teaching Energy Efficiency: A Cross-Border Public Class and Lesson Study in STEM

Abstract

As part of an APEC educational project on the cross-cutting concept of energy, researchers and teachers from 6 countries spent 8 months designing, testing and implementing a pilot STEM public class with two schools from Chile and one from the US. One of the researchers taught a lesson from a school in Chile, with a live transmission to the other two schools via Skype. At the same time, the lesson was also broadcasted via videostreaming. In addition to live questions and answers, students used individual devices to answer four open-ended questions that were commented on by the reseacher as he received them. The experience demonstrated that Cross-Border Public Classes boost student engagement and represent a promising strategy for introducing a key 21st century skill: synchronous learning involving multiple teams across the world. It also revealed how Lesson Study and Public Classes integrated with ICT network technology can form a powerful learning ecosystem for regional development and social innovation.