peer to peer learning - new practise and observations

Since I've been exposed to all this theory about the importance of peer learning groups, I took advantage of an opportunity to try out a different approach with a class of year 5 children today. It was their first lesson with the new eMac computers and OS X desktop.
I suggested to the class teacher that instead of a demonstration by me, we would just let the children go straight in and experiment for themselves, then report back whatever they managed to find out.

I wrote up on the board ( instead of a learning objective taken from the QCA scheme) :

What can we learn from each other about the new computers?
1)
2)
3)
etc

Then I introduced the session by saying "today I am not going to show you what to do, you are going to learn from each other. "

Result: Chaos! But the lesson was sucessful in a number of ways and everybody was pleased. In particular, those children who aren't good at following instructions and usually get told off seemed to feel empowered by the liberating lack of constraint, eagerly reported back discoveries and displayed positive self esteem. The two TAs and the class teacher all learned things as well, without having to pretend they already know more than the kids.

So instead of me telling them "this is how to find your documents, this is how to find your applications" and then they go off and play with the CD eject button, they got all that out of their systems in one go and then went on to seek out the Internet Browser. Once one person found it, you could literally observe that knowlege spreading along the walls of the room in both directions, just like wild fire.

I'm quite excited writing this up, because this is the first instance really of the ideas I have come across on the degree course affecting the way I act at work and think and observe. And to top it all, I believe this is just the sort of thing these learning journals are meant to be used for.