The Leonardo Effect

Stage 1 Capture Learner’s Imaginations: Use first-hand experiences in relevant contexts to inspire self-generated questions. Drawing on learner’s inherent curiosity a process of discovery-based learning begins, involving research with multimedia, books, experts, fellow pupils etc. Learners feel empowered and teachers feel energised to learn with them.

Stage 2 Development:  Learners explore in depth, develop ideas and conduct experiments via visual, aural and kinaesthetic means. This exciting and open-ended stage enables children to make connections, drawing out the learning process to facilitate development of all the learning capacities including skills, knowledge and understanding.

Stage 3 Creation:  Learners are challenged to apply their knowledge and skills in an innovative and creative context, which takes their learning to a higher level, exceeding usual curricular requirements.

Stage 4 Reflect and Communicate: In this phase pupils evaluate their own work and communicate their knowledge to a wider audience in the school or beyond in a multitude of ways, or embark on a new learning adventure inspired by the skills and knowledge they have acquired. (Suzie Pugh 2014)

The tunnel

A way in which this can be shown is through a task that we did in our seminar groups. The task was to work in groups to create a company that builds bridges, create some designs and design a bridge that is to be built connecting Swansea over the river.

Once we had built our design, drawn up plans and created a budget, the lecture – Suzie then came round and we had to present our ideas. The cost and how long it would take to build. The key was using our imagination and it really shows in the group I was in because instead of building a bridge, we decided to build a tunnel that went under the river so that it wasn’t a landscape spoiler.

You can also see in my group that a lot of development takes place because we looked in depth at other bridges that we already built, developed from them and came up with new ideas. This is what helped us to come up with the tunnel idea rather than the bridge idea as it seemed more viable.


Replica of tunnel through water

There is also a lot of creation that has taken place because in the group we applied our knowledge to what was already built and worked from there. WE then came up with what the bridge would look like through the ideas of current bridges and even went as far as trying to design it so you could see how it looked from a landscape view rather than just a tunnel under water.

View of Right side of the Tunnel

A view of the Entrance to tunnel

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that we managed to acquire the last stage as well because we evaluated our work, presented it to our fellow students and explained how it would be built how e acquired the idea and the costing. There is also a video below which shows the presentation of a bridge that the other group had created and you can see the level of depth that has been done in order to achieve what they have.

 

References

http://www.leonardoeffect.com/resources/Factsheet.pdf

Suzie Pugh 2014