Group items tagged

1) focus on project based learning 2) focus on play 3) focus on student-centric learning & passion (applied in both kindergarden and graduate school) 4) focus on practical problem solving 5) focus on the spirit of kindergarden 6) some outside the classroom learning 7) support activities & support structures for facilitating student passions 8] Everyone likes the physical world & experience (not just kids) 9) Can do media & virtual words too, in conjunction with physical world (particularly for modeling of complex systems) 10) Challenge to integrate individual/personal passion into group projects & collaboration (connect similar interests or complementary skills in an “organic way”) 11) There is a distinction between emergent collaboration and the order of “you 3 work together” 12) Scratch can change education–mirroring the use of Logo before it. Also, scratch mirrors snapping Legos together to create “media rich projects and share in an online community” Its programming for novices. Its accessible & tinkerable. Its about meaningful projects (not just generating list of prime #s). Resnick also points to the interesting program of Alice at Carnegie Mellon which is 3-D, but it unfortunately isn’t as meaningful & personal & social as Scratch. They’ve had 1 million projects in 3 years from kids around the world

Working with teachers to affect a deliberate culture and practice shift from teacher-directed instruction to inquiry-based learning Alternative pedagogical development Resource identification

Before approaching systemic change, we first considered the most prevalent instructional models. What we saw over and over again were relatively autonomous and singular teachers working with discrete groups of students. They were using directive instruction modes designed to impart information and learning within a specific topic area, often in isolation from other topic areas, and they were having inconsistent student achievement results with inner-city middle school populations.

Students at Manor New Tech typically complete nearly 200 projects over the course of their high school experience, with each project lasting about two to four weeks.

"How can we use mathematics to design and use a Dobsonian telescope?"

he rubric often includes time lines and information on essential elements of successful final products (for example, if a report may be produced as a podcast rather than a paper, the rubric specifies minimum length for the podcast).

I am currently collaborating with two of our English teachers to co-design and co-teach research and content creation for digital research projects.   Susan Lester (10th Honors World American Literature/Composition) and I began our project about three weeks ago (read more in this blog post), and I’ll be working with John Bradford (11th Honors American Literature/Composition) as of Tuesday for the next month or so on his twist on the project (more details coming soon).  In both of our collaborative projects, we felt our students were not quite ready  in terms of skill sets or prior learning experiences to completely open up the possibilities for a digital research “paper” or project although students do have creative latitude in choosing and designing their multigenre elements that will be integrated into the wiki based “text”; students also have the option to integrate multimedia into each section of their wikified “papers”.

the three of us  felt torn in wanting to open up the options and not setting up students for utter frustration (to the point many would completely shut down) in terms of combining two advanced skill sets (new research skills and content are being introduced);

This semester, we’ve chosen to create a social media campaign to raise awareness around modern slavery. This is the project-based part. It’s not enough for my students to learn about slavery, they need to do something with it, specifically “real world” projects that matter.

Teaching this way also allows me to teach real writing to my students. Before we started to create videos, my students looked at numerous YouTube videos about slavery. They focused on those they found powerful, and conversely, those that weren’t very effective. We analyzed the differences between the two. My students talked animatedly about how the powerful videos touched your emotions.

My students have started designing our curriculum units.

Put simply, project-based curriculum emphasizes learning through doing classroom projects that address a specific issue or challenge. Students typically carry out the projects in groups, and teachers guide them along

Tina Barseghian Editor of MindShift, a website about the future of learning Posted: January 7, 2011 02:48 PM BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index Napa New Tech High: 5 Reasons This is the School of the Future Amazing Inspiring Funny Scary Hot Crazy Important Weird Read More: Computer Tech School , Education Technology , Napa New Tech High , New Tech High Napa , New Tech Network , New Technology High , School Computer , Tech School , Tech Schools , Education News share this story 11481122 Get Education Alerts Sign Up Submit this story digg reddit stumble What does the high school of the future look like? It's one that emphasizes useful, relevant skills that can be applied

At Napa New Tech, you'll hear very little lecturing and see few teacher-led activities. For this school, the decision to use project-based curriculum was based not only on what topics students should learn, but also what skills they should acquire in school.

"It can take weeks of discussion, reading and searching, but once you have struck their passion, their eyes light up and you can't stop them," he says.

"There is really only one way to learn how to do something, and that is to do it."

Harnessing entirely pupil-led, project-based learning in this way isn't easy. But all of this frames learning in more meaningful contexts than the pseudocontexts of your average school textbook or contrived lesson plan, which might cover an area of the curriculum but leave the pupil none the wiser as to how it applies in the real world.