Okay, we’ve been given 30 minutes to have “discussions”.  My group is doing a “Critical Friends” session as we look at one teacher’s new PBL idea.  Very cool!

Step 1:  Teacher presents idea.

Step 2:  I like …. the group makes statements about components they liked

Step 3:  I wonder …. the group makes statements about things they’re wondering with the proposed project

Step 4:  Next step you should take ….

Steps 2-4 the presenting teacher only writes suggestions.  It’s not a discussion.  People just throw out ideas using the above format.

I had heard of Critical Friends, but never knew how it worked/nor had seen it in action.  Very helpful strategy for the sharing teacher to get new ideas he/she may never had thought about.  Very collaborative!

Bill Burgess – East Wake School of Integrated Technology

Entry document asks students to create a weather magazine that includes given topics (ie. 3-day forcast for given town, analysis of meteorological data, article on climate change, article on local severe weather.

Uses template for a group contract to complete the work (he also uses groups of 3).  In the contract are guidelines for “firing a group member” with specific ways to solve the problem within the group, with the teacher, and then if you get three strikes, you’re fired and have to do the project alone.

National Center for Atmospheric Research Website

Bill provides the kids with a Publisher template that they edit for their final product.

Bill’s email:  williamburgess@ewsit.nthls.com  He will send the rubric template their school uses.  Very nice!

• BIE: Home

  Project Based Learning site being used by leaders of the Durham PBL conference.

  tags: pbl

• HTML-PDF-Converter.com – Free HTML to PDF converter online, convert HTML to PDF for free

  Converts web pages to pdfs easily – might come in very handy next year.

  tags: html-pdf-converter.com

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Amy Thomas, Geometry teacher – Challenger Early College

Cool project in which students must design a city based upon a list of requirements by the zoning board.

Half way through the project a “New Restrictions” sheet was passed out so they had to make zoning changes.  Project Managers got rubric (using irubric.com) to see how their groups “met code”, met the “zoning changes”, required elements, neatness, etc.

Students could “file for an extension” if their group felt they could not meet the deadline.

On the last day of the project they get a form requesting a written report “formal letter” (to satisfy the requirement of ’soft writing’ be incorporated throughout the curriculum) of their “individual contribution” to the project.

Cool tie in would be to see how a real city planning meeting flows.  Her students watched a news clip about a local county cutting their planning board staff down from 8 to 1 member.  She incorporated that into the in-class project!

She uses groups of 3 for this particular project. Engineer, Architect, and Project Manager.

Group now talking about working with the art teacher and others to make it more cross-curricular.

Some projects also having their kids design Geometric homes and partnering with Habitat for Humanity as their experts in the classroom.

Matt Sears – Hillside New Tech High (and my Kenan Fellow buddy!)

• going over 21st Century Skills site information:
• Life and Career Skills
• Learning and Innovation Skills
• Information, Media, and Technology Skills
• Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
• We brainstormed activities and skills that fall under each of these four main categories.
• Promise made by Matt’s school to parents, “When your child graduates they will have not only traditional content but the above list to better prepare them for 21st Century living.”
• Five evaluation columns on grade card (Learning Outcomes):
  
• 1. communication (10%), 2. work ethic (being on time, collaboration, turning in hw) (10%), 3. content knowledge (60%), 4. inventive thinking (problem solving, higher order thinking, reasoning, creativity)(10%), 5. technology skills (10%)
• Rubrics have been created for each of the above Learning Outcomes.  Include the objective from the SCOS on the rubric.
• Work ethic rubric is really the only one Matt doesn’t change throughout the year.
• 9 New Tech schools in NC flowing from the original pilot in Napa, CA
• Good place to infuse Marzano while developing Learning Outcomes!! (my thoughts)
• We are now working on developing a basic project that would include measuring the categories of ethics/work ethic, communication, problem solving/higher order thinking, and technology skills; we developed an “Earthquakes Around the World” scenario where groups would be creating wikis.

Lee Fleming – New Technology Foundation

• Identifying standards I want to address – how much time do I want to spend on each of these standards during the year?  She suggests choosing 8-10 main standards
• PBL: Mile deep as opposed to mile wide  YES!
• Create map (chart) with 1. first column write the chosen Standard, 2. second column – what professionals would be involved in knowing that information? (create as large a list as possible), 3. column 3 – why does each of these professionals need to know this information?, 4. column 4 – what will the professional DO with the information?
• Again, make sure the final product is presented in front of some outside experts!
• How can we make these real world problems engaging for students?  Provide them with some ownership responsibilities, competition, use student interest inventory to guide the projects into areas where student interest lies.
• “Only 7% of American college students are entering STEM fields.”  PBL exposes students to occupations in these areas they might not otherwise learn about.
• Link for this from Buck Institute – Planning the Project
• Mid-Unit Project Crash!  What can you do?  Make sure you are conducting daily formative assessment to avoid a major crash!  Grab small groups and work on some independent “workshops” to help them get over the dilemma before it gets carried away.
• Important to let the students struggle along the way, and not be the “life-saver”!  Let them try to figure it out and then conduct mini-”workshops” if they are really stuck.  They must let you know what they feel they “need” though.

Frederica Nash (Science Teacher at Hillside)

• Took goals from NCSCOS
• Entry Doc – Job ad at local news agency seeking “just out of college” team of meterologists to come in and demo their skills.  Tweaked it to be news station of the school.
• Posted ad around school prior to conducting it – pique student interest!
• Scaffolding Activities:  Atmospheric conditions activity around the world, analyze and evaluate local weather reports, workshop on Earth’s seasons, prediction activities after studying week’s worth of models, data collection activities
• Final Product: Video taped weather report (would be cool to incorporate Visual Communicator software), her students had to create PowerPoint but it could only include pictures.  Had to dress for the weather in their researched city.
• Included intro clips from real weather channels to make is seem authentic.
• Assessment included requiring a collection of different media into their final product.
• The workshops (lectures) the students participate in depend on what they don’t understand and see as their “learning needs” for the unit.  The workshops might be different every time you conduct the unit depending upon what the students do/don’t understand.
• Smart Notebook Version 10 must have the symbols the students could use to create their weather report as well.
• Utilize a “Project Briefcase” that houses support documents and other media for the students to self-learn the concepts as needed.  LOVE this idea!!

Paul Fomalont The Putney School Putney, VT

Wow, someone from home presenting down here!! Cool!

Although I don’t understand the math behind his PBL project, interesting idea of using a free game program (Pocket Tanks) to involve kids in the math/science.  Need to look into what other lower level math programs similar to this there are!  Neat ideas.

Kelley Yonce – East Wake School of Integrated Technology

• Sent to Buck Institute for training 4 years ago.
• Buy PBL Handbook from Buck Institute (www.bie.org)
• Projects on the Buck website
• Need a lot of collaboration from others to make units successful.
• Frustration should be expected by the kids – leads to overcoming challenges.
• No one right answer – answers often lead to more questions
• PBL is different than the “one culminating project” type learning
• In PBL project runs throughout the unit
• Start with entry document or entry event (ie. speaker, video) – “launch the project”
• Know/Need to Know – useful to do this in small groups and then compile ideas with whole group
• Students need guidance with pulling out the Need to Know list
• Put vocab in entry document that they don’t know purposefully
• Scaffold all lectures (she calls them “workshops) with this vocabulary
• End with a rubric that contains everything that should be seen throughout project
• PBL involves the students becoming much more active learners, using teacher as a guide
• Makes teaching in the classroom have greater purpose because activities MUST focus on the purpose of the project unit
• Involves more authentic evaluation
• Bring in others for culminating event/presentation
• Provides kids with realistic, high-stakes work if experts will be at their presentations
• Involves community in a much more authentic way
• DESIGN: 1. begin with the end in mind – what will product look like?  2. craft the driving question – what will the kids answer by the time the project is completed?  3. plan the assessment  4. map the project – what will the activities be and what materials do you need?  5. manage the process – group dynamics.
• Begin with the end in mind:  SCOS, School wide learning outcomes; helps to narrow topic and helps you write the rubric (copy and paste standards from NCSCOS to begin rubric).  Self assessments by groups are including in the grading format (as well as oral communication grades, written communication grades, collaboration, technology, etc.)
• What is a realistic scenario you can create to help them learn these objectives?
• Driving Question: what makes the project intriguing, complex, problematic? – They are provocative, open-ended, challenging, arise from kid-relevant real-world situations, acts as a “lighthouse” to keep you on course, goes to heart of discipline or topic (Buck handbook helpful in this area!).  Ask yourself, “Is there a profession that the question ties to, so kids get some career ideas”.  Broad in scope but kids need to maintain focus.
• Refining Driving Question – make sure questions are not bogged down with certain act, make it encompass a larger scope.
• Plan the Assessment – What products could demonstrate what the kids have learned?  Final products, sub-assignments, process documents.  Things that will help the kids form the product at the end.
• Final Products – require students to understand, synthesize, and apply the project’s outcomes.  Be authentic, relevant and interesting to the kids, provide opportunities to demonstrate and reflect learning.  Oral presentations important.
• Scaffolding – students should see a clear connection between the assignment and the project.
• Assessment Rubrics – need learning outcomes, various performance levels, MUST be handed out early in the unit to set expectations.  Teach the rubric as if it is a checklist!
• Map the Project – Organize tasks/activities, gather materials, contact experts, use storyboarding
• Entry Document – Provide their roles/purpose and their task
• Teacher’s main role is to manage the PBL environment; group students appropriately, orient students to the goals, organize daily activities, clarification, monitor student behavior, manage workflow, evaluate success and reflect on learning – provide rubric filled out prior to the presentation…
• Resources:  Midlink Magazine, Thinkquest Project Library, Buck Institute, George Lucas Education Foundation