Colette Cassinelli’s edtech VISION

My former Pepperdine professor, Gary Stager states in an article for Creative Educator that “teachers instinctively know that projects are worthwhile, even if they do not understand every facet of a good project or have experience supporting project-based learning”.

I have taken great pains to change my Computer Applications course from a skills-based computer competency class to a project-based approach – using technology tools to further explore topics that aren’t normally covered in a traditional “computer” class.  Yes, we learn technology but we also explore the bigger picture – making the world a better place, evaluating our eating habits, matching careers to our personalities, reducing lunch waste … being a digital citizen.  These topics give us plenty of opportunity to analyze data in Excel, write blog posts, learn mail merge, create posters and present research in creative and authentic ways.

Too often “traditional” computer classes fail to help students transfer the skills learned to other classes.  My goal is to use my thematic units to teach a variety of technology skills but in a manner that is authentic and relevant.  This also gives the other teachers in my school a model of how they can use technology in their curriculum to explore and examine curriculum topics.

I used the backwards planning approach outline in Understanding by Design (Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe) to plan most of thematic computer units.  UbD works “within the standards-driven curriculum to help teachers clarify learning goals, devise revealing assessments of student understanding, and craft effective and engaging learning activities.”

Stager’s eight elements to great project design go hand-in-hand with Understanding by Design.  Just make sure the focus of your projects is student learning and understanding.

Eight Elements of a Good Project

Purpose and Relevance. Is the project personally meaningful? Does the project prompt intrigue in the learner enough to have him or her invest time, effort, and creativity in the development of the project?

Novelty. Few project ideas are so profound that every child needs to engage in its development in every class, or year after year. In a healthy community of practice, learning continues and knowledge is shared naturally without coerced repetition.

Time. Sufficient time must be provided for learners to think about, plan, execute, debug, change course, expand, and edit their projects. Class time affords students equal access to expertise and materials; projects may also need sufficient out-of-school time.

Complexity. The best projects combine multiple subject areas and call upon the prior knowledge and expertise of each student. Best of all, serendipitous insights and connections to big ideas lead to the greatest payoff for learners.

Intensity. Children have a remarkable capacity for intensity that is rarely tapped by the sliced-and-diced curriculum. Projects provide an outlet for the exercise of that intensity.

Connected. During great projects students are connected to each other, experts, multiple subject areas, powerful ideas, and the world via the Web. The lessons learned during interpersonal connections that are required by collaborative projects last a lifetime.

Access. Students need access to a wide variety of concrete and digital materials anytime, anyplace. Personal student laptops make this possible, but we also need to think about the quality and quantity of craft materials, books, tools, hardware, software, and Internet access that allows learners to follow paths we may never have anticipated.

Shareable. This is the big idea of project-based learning! Students need to make something that is shareable with others. This provides a great deal of motivation, relevance, perspective making, reciprocal learning, and an authentic audience for the project.

In my attempt to embrace more of a constructivist method of learning in my classroom, I allowed students to construct their own career-centered research projects.  After reading about John Holland’s 6 personality traits and how matching your personality to your job results in more job satisfaction, students set out to learn more about one career or careers for their top personality.  I did not direct their learning – but told them they would have to share their learning somehow.   I encouraged students to find the right set of tools to demonstrate their understanding or ones that better suit their personality.

I was pleasantly surprised by not only the variety of tools used, but the level of depth and sharing and explanations that took place during their small group shares. The only requirement I made was that the student use a first-person resource and include quotes or audio from an interview in their project or presentation (so they would see this as real and not just an assignment).

After working on the project for a week, students brainstormed ideas for how we were going to evaluate the projects if everyone’s project were going to be different.  They settled on 3 main categories:

1. Appropriate use of interview
2. Quality of content
3. Use of technology

The “content” area was broken down by the students even more.  When asked, “How do we evaluate the content?”, students responded by using a 1-10 scale for different research areas, such as:  Description of job, Training/ Qualifications, Earnings, Job Outlook and Related Occupations.

I was encouraged that the students recognized that in order to fully explain one career they needed to cover a wide range of topics.  The class constructed a Google form for evaluations.  Brainstorming these ideas and discussing expectations in the middle of the research project helped some student focus their research and provided good questions for the interviews.

Below are some examples of what they created to go along with their oral presentations.

Movie:  Laser Technician

PowerPoint

Website:  http://adopt524.webs.com/project.html

A student-created website about Artistic careers

Glogster Poster

A video made by Pearson for CoSN: The Consortium for School Networking.  It should be shared with every principal and administrator.  Pass it on …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4VhoWGZ2eA

I still teach a basic computer application course (as opposed to working with HS teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum) and my goal is to make sure students have the tech skills necessary to be successful in class.  I don’t, however, want to just teach “computer skills” – and teach technology just for the sake of  learning technology.  The past few years I have redesign my computer application course around themes, such as career exploration, teen issues, nutrition/recycling, and CSI (computer scene investigation!)

Through out each theme. we use the tools of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Web 2.0 tools to investigate our topic.  For example, during the career unit we took a personality tests based on Dr. John Holland’s theory that people and work environments can be classified into six different groups:  Social, Artistic, Investigative, Enterprising, Realistic and Conventional.  We created tables in Word to describe the attributes of these personality traits and listed careers for each group.  We collected data about annual earnings, percent of growth and number of annual openings and analyzed the data in Excel and created graphs to display the information.  We made online slide shows, cartoons, and magazine covers using favorite Web 2.o tools like toondoo, polldaddy, photo show and flickr toys.  For a final culminating project, we are designing kiosks (using science board type displays) to display all of our information.  We will host a career fair to help other classmates discover their strongest personality trait and which career options are best for them.

While I feel that the students are much more engaged in the thematic units, it does require careful planning on my part to make sure that all the required skills are introduced, reviewed and mastered throughout the term.

Years ago when I taught 4th grade I participated in a classroom exchange called “Postcard Geography”.  My students eagerly awaited postcards that we exchanged with schools all across the US.  We created a large bulletin board with a map of the US and  pinned the postcards next to the city is came from.  It was fun to read about the area around the school and we often referred to our postcards as we studied the regions of the US.

This summer I was searching the Internet for collaborative projects and I came across the Postcard Geography project again.  I considered doing the project with my 7th & 8th grade computer classes.  I figured with all the online resources at our fingertips, the project would be a lot different than the past.  Little did I know ….

Welcome to the 21st Century!  We received our first postcard last week and the students immediately went to the  Internet and Google Maps to located the town.  As they were zooming in on the small town in Texas, it dawned on me that we could “pin” the location on the maps in Google Earth.  So we switched to Google Earth and found the exact location of the school.  As I read the postcard aloud to the class they zoomed out to locate neighboring cities that were mentioned, commented on the amount of trees by the school and the layout of the town.  We calculated distance to the Gulf of Mexico and followed a river near the city that emptied into the Gulf.

One student suggested that we write the exact longitude and latitude coordinates of our school on our postcards so other schools can find out exactly where we are located.  I opened up the discussion to the students of how they wanted to participate in the project.  Everyone agreed that they still wanted to send the postcards the old fashioned way but also create a digital postcard that could be emailed.  There were lots of ideas of making a movie, taking photos around town and embedding them onto a map, designing original postcards, and making a narrative slide show.

The enthusiasm was endless.  I felt like I just presented an idea to the class and they took hold and went with it.  None of the students realized how many geography skills they reviewed during the Google Earth activity (and in computer class – gasp!) or how many computer skills they suggested for upcoming projects.  I will allow the students to choose how the class will send “digital postcards” to the other school but I also have plans for using Google Earth to create a virtual field trip to “visit” some of the school and teach them how to read a GPS device.

I really enjoyed participating in the Postcard project the first time around but this time around the technology makes this project more authentic and real.

I overheard two students discussing the Texas school while they were viewing the map on Google Earth …

Student 1:  Look how many tennis courts they have at their school.

Student 2:  Well, the weather is nice in Texas (compared to the rain in Oregon) so they probably go outside more.

Student 1:  Yeah, but it gets real hot there.  Good thing they aren’t too far away from the Gulf.

You would swear they were talking about a place they had visited before.  They gathered all this information from looking at a satellite map.  I can’t wait until we receive news from some schools in Australia, Taiwan and Spain.

I am encouraged once again to see the discussion in the blogosphere about making sure we use Web 2.0 tools to support learning and a new pedagogy in the classroom. Chris Lehmann writes about using the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework by Wiggins and McTighe. We need to make sure we are not doing “activities” just for the sake of their newness or cool factor. With such limited time during the day, each of our assignments must be focused on student understanding and our goals and objectives. Lehmann writes:

… we owe it to ourselves and our kids to step back and ask ourselves questions like:

• How does the use of this tool contribute to a students’ understanding of the unit / project / class.
• How does the use of the tool enhance a students’ ability to communicate their ideas / refine their presentation skills?
• Does the tool change the frame or lens with with students can view their learning process?
• Does the tool powerfully expand or change students’ learning network?
• Is the tool more fun than useful? (Not that fun is bad, I like fun, but let’s also acknowledge that, in schools, our learning should be “serious fun.”)

The underlying theme is that we must design our lessons purposefully and thoughfully. I admit it – I am guilty of incorporating a new gadget or tool, or “fun” activity into my lessons just for the sake of the activity – with no real goal or purpose in mind. But after reading UbD, I see now how I could have still used those same tools – but redesigned the lesson in a way that using the tool led to learning and a better understanding of the goal in mind – AND- the students too would know WHY they were doing the activity – a key point that too often we assume they know why (ask them!).

With the school year looming a month away – it’s time for me to pull out my Understanding by Design book and reread sections so my frame of mind is properly set for lesson planning.

You might also want to check out the UbD wiki where you can post your UbD curriculum units.