project based learning Search Results

What is an Innovation Class…and Why Do You Need One?

…design and implement their own projects: Students learn how to set SMART goals. They study the protocols they will use for planning, implementing, and reflecting on their projects. They set up public-facing social media profiles “where people want to follow you, that they’re shocked and amazed that somebody at 16 years old is going to be tackling great problems,” Wettrick says. Each student starts a blog, a podcast, or a YouTube channel, which they’ll use to submit the required course reflections. Part 2: Open Source Learning For the rest of the year, students get to work on their self-directed projects….

Episode 126: Student-Written Graphic Novels

…to be able to choose end goals that are, that make sense, given their starting point and where they want to be. GONZALEZ: Right. MILLER: So I, I provide sort of a variety of options there. And students will then kind of fill out what I, what I give as a personal goals chart where they simply indicate where I started, where I want to be, which is where they can list two or three of these objectives. GONZALEZ: Yeah. MILLER: And then at the end, where I am, which is based on their end project, feedback, and then where…

Episode 203: What happens when two schools experience the Street Data process

…along the way. I think our school found some major success working alongside some teachers with a common vision and some administrators with a common vision to achieve some equitable learning and some belonging for our marginalized students in the space. And we’ve read so many books before about what’s going on with kids or how we can see kids or how we can improve the learning of our kids. But I feel like Street Data really allowed us to sit in the uncomfortable conversations and allowed us to stretch ourselves to change our practice and our system a little…

A Few Creative Ways to Use Student Blogs

…wider audience and might even end up turning into a career. 1. The Single Project Blog This would be devoted to documenting a project from beginning to end. It would include a description of how the idea came about, any research and planning that happened, progress on the project at different stages along the way, the final result, and impacts or outcomes after the project was over. If your school does a lot of project-based learning or offers a genius hour program or an innovation class, this type of blog would be a natural fit. Example Topics: A community service…

What Is the Point of a Makerspace?

…currently teaches at the university level. He’s also the co-author, with A.J. Juliani, of the books Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, and Empower: What Happens When Students Own their Learning. John Spencer Spencer teaches online courses about Project-Based Learning, Design Thinking, and Makerspaces, and I really trust his thinking, so I knew he would be a great person to help me demystify the makerspace: What it is, why we would want one, and how to get started. What Is a Makerspace? Spencer’s definition of a makerspace is much broader than…

Standardized Tests Aren’t Going Anywhere. So What Do We Do?

…scores are used to rank schools, the amount of time actual testing takes, and well, there are a lot of issues with large-scale, federally-mandated tests. Change is happening though! Some of the efforts are based on projects that have been around for a while. For example, New York’s long-running Performance Assessment Consortium and the rise of portfolio or competency-based schools in Pennsylvania, California, and Illinois are all multi-year projects that provide models for how states can come at large-scale assessment and accountability in a different way. Other efforts, such as The Beyond Test Scores Project, are newer. Jack Schneider, Hutt’s…

The Surprising Benefits of Student-Created Graphic Novels

…I project the pages and we perform a close read like we have done so many times with the pages of Persepolis. Students who do not seize this opportunity to get such thorough feedback on their work still benefit from providing and listening to the feedback given for a peer’s work. Assessing the Results In the past, when I had scored these projects with As, I felt like I was sending a message that the learning was done. That their few-page attempts could just not be any better. But the goal is not that a student becomes a master at…

16 Ideas for Student Projects Using Google Docs, Slides, and Forms

…research. Feedback Form Have students provide feedback to each other’s presentations, speeches, even videos using Google Forms. Here’s how it would work: Each student creates her own form, asking for the kind of feedback she wants on the project. As other students view or the project, they can be sent to a form to offer praise or constructive criticism, which the creator would then be able to view privately and use to improve the project. Students could even use their feedback to write a reflection on their process after the project is done. Quiz One great way to learn material…

Episode 105: Voice of Witness: Bring the Power of Oral History to Your Classroom

…power dynamics and looking at insider/outsider dynamics. So all of that goes into the choices around which books go forward and which projects go forward, and then usually the project editors are the project leads, because they’re the one developing the relationships, do the majority of the interviewing themselves, and they do occasionally have other people that step in and help them kind of spread out a little bit to get some more interviews, but all the interviews are based on building relationships and building trust with the narrators and the narrator communities. GONZALEZ: Okay. And that is going to…