Authentic Problem Solving & Cultural Artifacts

Seeing the relationship between textbook questions based on the reading of a chapter or a story and authentic problems is a challenge for the school classrooms. Answering the challenge is essential in giving students the motivation and confidence that they can tackle real world problems. See this link to T. Lowrie's solution to this problem using cultural artifacts which can easily be collected from the communities of learners. For those adults immersed in real world problems, this issue is different. The adult problem is more one of spotting and sharing the problem. Communication systems which tie adult abilities to find and share problems with teachers seeking classroom useable authentic problems would be helpful to both. iCROP uses its SUP (Still Unsolved Problem) database as one model of such a system.

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