When learning is a project

If you've recovered from the clip of Matt Damon, let's get back to my summer workshops (if you haven't recovered, you have my permission to revisit the video and hit Replay as often as you feel necessary. As they say in some workshops, "Pull your own happiness wagon.")

The next workshop I attended was Connecting Students with Project Based Learning, again taught by the lovely and accomplished Oretha F. Here is the workshop wiki that she used (lots of good links, as always) and a little video she started us off with.



I have some intermittent notes, that I will share along with highlights from the wiki. The video above emphasizes three things in project based learning: critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. I'll give you another number to remember: two. The biggest keys to true project based learning are Choice and Time. "When your students' projects all look alike (all posters, all reports, or all powerpoints), then it's not true project based learning. It doesn't include the deep thinking involved in choice."

Of course, there were some questions - like how do you keep your sanity as a teacher when students are truly given choice? How do you manage a classroom and maintain control? I'm not sure we had comprehensive answers for that, but some thoughts might be that you change your definition of control. You establish rubrics, not just for what a finished product will look like, but also for time to complete stages of projects, for what content is important and what learning you (the teacher) need to see.

The article "Why Teach with Project Based Learning?" from Edutopia is an introduction to several articles and videos that they have on their site. It includes a 9:00 minute video that was interesting, but I found frustrating at times (it suggested dropping standards - not an option I'm given - and it concentrated heavily on science). But there was especially one paragraph that I liked.

Because students are evaluated on the basis of their projects, rather than on the comparatively narrow rubrics defined by exams, essays, and written reports, assessment of project-based work is often more meaningful to them. They quickly see how academic work can connect to real-life issues -- and may even be inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed. [italics added]

The idea of activism, of participating in the wider community, of developing a sense of social justice and involvement is one that has been recurring to me for a few months. I think this is a good way to engage students in an English class. They see my class as "boring" and just reading, writing, grammar. I think that the key - relevance - is found in how we use this area of study in the real world. And that all boils down to communication. I hope to explore that in class this year.

An example we were put through - Oretha gave us a "quiz" (like an anticipation guide) on child labor. After about 3 questions, and revealing the answers (without discussion), students could be given informational texts on sweatshops, child labor, child soldiers, child marriage.... They can also be shown images (we were shown this one of a child soldier) and engage in a Write Around (conversations on paper - one person writes their own thoughts for a period of time, then passes to next person in group. Read theirs, and comment or repeat your thoughts. Students really look forward to getting their papers back and reading others thoughts.) Now, what did you do? You just tricked a bunch of students into reading informational text with interest, thinking about it critically (in order to evaluate it, summarize, or assimilate it into new arguments) and write persuasively. That's a good day's work!

Anyway, there's lots to explore at Edutopia. Look around.

From notes:

"Applying technologies of our daily lives...."
Implications of this:
* Students will need technology skills
* Students will be expected to solve real world tasks with tech tools
* Technology will be the "toolbox" for project based learning
* Students will be evaluated on what they can do as well as what they know

There was a powerpoint with information that I made a note to try to get. It concerned the new Common Core Standards, but I believe they were in technology, not Language Arts. See, I'm used to the older thinking of keeping standards separate. But if I'm correct, the new standards are much more cross-curricular, with literacy standards in history and science, and possibly vice-versa. I need to get up-to-date, because I think it's a brilliant concept.

Most of the rest of my notes are comments on links we saw. We also spent some time looking at projects that she had with her from classes (newsletters, brochures, and especially the collages - that she modeled for students with a simple 2 row set of pictures, and they outdid her with complex, beautiful digital creations, all about books). Here are highlights (may be on the wiki, may not):

Technology and Common Core - link to a wiki for another workshop that she is teaching. I thought it might have the powerpoint that I mentioned above. On quick investigation I didn't see it, but saw other things to explore.

Project Based Learning for the 21st Century - the Buck Institute for Education, with lots of examples, videos, etc.



Designing Your Project is a planning site that will lead you through the steps of planning a project based lesson. The first step? Begin with the end in mind.

DoSomething.org - a social activism site with videos, news, and projects (not necessarily classroom ones). The description says, "Using the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline."


Outta Ray's Head is a lesson plan collection. It started with one teacher, but has had many contributors add to it. His goal was that "lessons would be complete with a rationale for why I used them, and the handouts and evaluations" rather than just general descriptions. Some good projects under literature and poetry.

ReadWriteThink is an excellent resource, a joint project of the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. Explore to your heart's content from the main page, but here is an example of a project that uses adjectives to explore character traits, and another project that allows students to create social network-style profile pages (like for a literary character).

That's the notes, and links that I wanted to remember to explore. The truth is, this is such a vast topic that I still end up leaving a training a little confused. No, maybe confused isn't the right adjective, maybe it's overwhelmed. There are so many options and things to consider that it is hard to say immediately, "Aha! THIS is how I'm going to use this." We spent the afternoon, however, working on lesson planning, and I came a bit closer to a beginning of the year project that I have wanted to do for a while now. If I get it into shape, I'll post it here.

I'll leave you with this final question: How can technology support teaching and learning in your class today? If you can't clearly answer that question, then don't use it.