
Bioethics Day and Connected Learning
Though we didn’t plan with Connected Learning in mind, it turns out that Bioethics Day does, in fact, meet many of the principles and values of Connected Learning:
Our study of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks became production-centered, in that we were constantly looking for information that we could share during Bioethics Day; our planning for Bioethics Day was driven by the interests of students (and what they perceived as the interests of their peers); students and teachers worked with a shared purpose (putting on Bioethics Day) in mind while planning, and we were pleased to see participants in Bioethics Day collaborating across barriers of age and geography; the fact that Bioethics Day was almost entirely student-facilitated promoted a culture of peer leadership within our school; and as a culminating event in a cross-disciplinary study, Bioethics Day was definitely academic in focus.