Project-based Learning for Innovation (Deeper Learning)

Project-Based Learning Leads to Innovation

By Anthony Jackson on April 23, 2013 4:20 AM

The number one question I am asked is what teaching for the global innovation age looks like. My colleague Lisa Tyrrell offers a glimpse at promising practices.

By Lisa Tyrrell

At the recent Deeper Learning Conference at High Tech High in San Diego, keynote speakerDr. Tony Wagner spoke about the importance of preparing students for the innovation economy. He knows a thing or two about this: Wagner is the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University and author of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.

Many of the young, successful entrepreneurs that Wagner interviewed for his book noted that it was their project-based learning experiences that prepared them to be successful in the global innovation economy.

How are schools working to encourage the next generation of innovators? By developing unique, project-based learning opportunities that foster students' passion and creativity, teachers are promoting innovation and Deeper Learning. Deeper learning experiences help students master core academic content, think critically, solve complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, and engage in self-directed learning.

For example, consider Brian Bailey, English teacher at the Ambassador School of Global Leadership in Los Angeles, California. Brian allows students "Innovation" time each Friday in order to investigate their personal passions. This practice is modeled after Google's twenty-percent time—where employees can spend 20% of work time on anything they want, with the belief that free thinking and tinkering leads to innovation. One student is learning to program a computer to respond to voice commands. Another student is attempting to develop a substance that will keep gum from sticking to tables. Other students are sponsoring children from other countries, working on a water purification system for salt-water, and trying to patent a product that will remove stains from suede. A small group of students are collaboratively reviewing the work of The National Research Council Committee to assess fuel economy technologies for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. This group is then working together to investigate ideas for greater fuel efficiency. Through self-directed learning, all these students are learning core academic content while thinking critically and solving complex problems.

Another good example comes from The Denver Center for International Studies (DCIS), where upperclassmen are afforded the opportunity to explore their personal passions through a program called Passages. This multi-year, project-based course allows students to engage in self-directed learning based on their individual interests in global issues. Students collaborate with faculty and community mentors to research a self-selected topic. Sample projects include: investigating the benefits and innovations that were a result of NASA spending; researching brain plasticity theories and treatments for Alzheimer's, stroke, and phantom limbs; exploring renewable energy and testing different types of bio-diesel; developing a mentoring program for DCIS between High School and Middle School students; collecting medical supplies for Project Cure and working in a village in the Dominican Republic; organizing a trip to Thailand to work at an elephant rescue camp; service learning trip to two Haitian villages in the Dominican Republic; and facilitating student exchanges with other international studies schools and the developing a website for ongoing communication between students. Each spring, seniors exhibit their learning to the DCIS community and their committee. These projects engage the students in each of the tenets of Deeper Learning.

These are just two of several examples of the innovative teaching and deeper learning occurring schools. Both schools are part of the Asia Society International Studies Schools Network, which is part of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Deeper Learning Community of Practice.

STEM & the Outside World - Making the Environmental Connection (Happy Earth Day!)

Guest Blog: Connecting environmental education and STEM

Submitted by Christina on Fri, 2013-04-19 14:57

What are the learning goals of environmental education? How are they best accomplished? How do they support the broader goals of improving students’ STEM skills?

Students have an innate curiosity – even wonder – about the natural world around them. Environmental education (EE) taps into their enthusiasm and provides them the knowledge and skills to solve 21^st-century challenges. Early connection with the environment also equips students to make everyday decisions that improve the quality of their lives and the health of our planet.
The goals of EE can be accomplished well through project-based learning and hands-on exploration of the outdoors. Local, place-based environmental projects provide relevant learning experiences for students and an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in their communities.

Through EE, students learn not only STEM content, but also develop the critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills that are critical for success in STEM careers where substantial growth is expected. Further, studies indicate that young people who experience the natural world and have more opportunities to play and learn within it are more likely to choose science or related fields as careers.

What are the opportunities and obstacles to introducing students to environmental education?

While field trips and opportunities to explore nature centers and other nonformal education settings are valuable to sparking interest and deeper knowledge about the environment, lack of time and resources can make it challenging for teachers to provide those opportunities. Increasingly, schools are investing in enriching the more accessible laboratories for learning that exist right outside the classroom door, in a nearby park, the schoolyard, school garden -- even the school building itself. Recognizing the national priority on successfully engaging more students in STEM, significantly more environmental science content is being integrated across multiple disciplines. There are expanded opportunities within the new Next Generation Science Standards to emphasize science learning through an environmental context, through content on human impacts on the natural world.

What do policymakers and decision makers need to know when thinking about STEM learning and environmental education?

Research and survey findings indicate young people have a strong interest in the environment. Total employment in STEM jobs is expected to increase by twice as much as all other jobs by 2018 and environmental science jobs are expected to grow by 25% by 2016 – the fastest among the sciences. Sources and additional statistics can be found in the new Tech & Our Planet infographic.
In 2011 the U.S. Department of Education developed the Green Ribbon Schools recognition award, which honors schools that are exemplary in reducing environmental impact and costs; improving the health and wellness of students and staff; and providing effective environmental and sustainability education, which incorporates STEM, civic skills and green career pathways. This year, as part ofNational Environmental Education Week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan did a PSA that speaks to the important connection between EE and STEM.

Submitted by Jennifer Tabola, senior director of education, National Environmental Education Foundation

On Connected, Community/Interest Based Learning

Wednesday Interview - Breaking the Cycle of Students' Disengagement by Having Them Leave, to Learn

Join me Wednesday, April 17th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com conversation with Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski on their new book, Leaving to Learn: How Out-of-School Learning Increases Student Engagement and Reduces Dropout Rates.

The first step to addressing the nation's dropout rate, Elliot and Charlie argue, is letting students "leave, to learn."  (From the book's description:) "It's an alarming fact: in the U.S., one student drops out of school every 12 seconds. Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski, both of Big Picture Learning, have a proven, innovative solution for stemming the flow of drop-outs and breaking the cycle of disengagement that leads up to it. It's called leaving to learn. Leaving to Learn helps us deeply understand the real reasons kids drop out and the essential conditions for productive learning that today's adolescents require. The authors then make a compelling argument: in order to retain students through to graduation, schools must offer experiences where students do some of their learning outside of school. With common sense 'rules of the road,' the authors offer nuts and bolts guidelines for implementing a high-quality Leaving to Learn program, including:examples of the many forms of out-of-school learning: internships, travel, community service, independent projects, and more seamlessly integrating students' outside learning with in-school curriculum assigning academic credit for out-of-school accomplishments."

Date: Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://www.futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page.
Recording:  A full Blackboard Collaborate recording is athttps://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2013-04-17.0748.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and an audio mp3 recording is athttp://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/leavingtolearn.mp3 and at http://www.futureofeducation.com.
Mightybell:  A Mightybell space with interview resources and to continue the conversation is at https://mightybell.com/spaces/44050.

Elliot Washor, Ed.D. is the co-founder and co-director of Big Picture Learning. He is also the co-founder of The Met Center in Providence, RI.

Elliot has been involved in school reform for more than 30 years as a teacher, principal, administrator, video producer, and writer. He has taught and is interested in all levels of school from kindergarten through college, in urban and rural settings, across all disciplines. His work has spanned across school design, pedagogy, learning environments, and education reform and is supporting others doing similar work throughout the world. Elliot’s interests lie in the field of how schools can connect with communities to understand tacit and disciplinary learning both in and outside of school. Elliot is deeply committed to imagining Big Picture Learning as a ‘do-think-do’ organization, and persistently pushes the boundaries of its design in order to continually innovate practice and influence in the world of education.

At Thayer High School in Winchester, N.H., Elliot’s professional development programs won an “Innovations in State and Local Government Award” from the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has been selected as an educator to watch in Rhode Island and has recently been selected as one of the Daring Dozen – the Twelve Most Daring Educators in the World by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. His dissertation on Innovative Pedagogy and New Facilities won the merit award from DesignShare, the international forum for innovative schools.

Elliot lives in sunny San Diego with his wife and five dogs.

Charlie Mojkowski worked with Elliot Washor and Dennis Littky in creating Big Picture Learning and The Met School in Providence. He currently works with Elliot on developing new initiatives that refine and extend the Big Picture Learning design. Charlie has served as an independent consultant to education and business since 1976. He works primarily in the areas of school and curriculum improvement, leadership and organizational development, program evaluation, and applications of technology that support that work. Charlie designed, administered, and taught in a doctoral program in educational leadership; directed the Rhode Island Educational Leadership Academy; and served as Executive Director of the Rhode Island Association of School Principals.

The Maker Movement: White House Google + Hangout

School Leadership Summit - Tomorrow LIVE! (Steve Hargadon - Talks will be archived)

. Thursday, March 28th, is our inaugural, online, and free School Leadership Summit. http://www.SchoolLeadershipSummit.com. We invite you to join us for a very full day of sessions from Yong Zhao, Michael Fullan, Bill Brennan, and 67 other presenters as part of a virtual and collaborative global conversation on school leadership. The hour-by-hour conference schedule, with instructions for attending, is available to view in 35 different time zones at http://admin20.org/page/schedule. The Summit welcome is at 6:30am US Pacific Daylight Time, and the conference finishes with an informal online "after party" at 7:00pm, twelve and a half hours later. Conference strands are aligned to the internationally-recognized ISTE National Education Technology Standards for Administrators and include the leadership topics of: Vision in a Changing World, Teaching and Learning in a Changing World, Professional Learning in a Changing World, Data-driven Reform in a Changing World, and Ethical and Responsible Use in a Changing World.  TICAL (the Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership) is the founding partner of the conference. We invite you to join us! All are welcome. See you online! Steve Steve Hargadon Co-Chair, 2013 School Leadership Summit http://www.stevehargadon.com Visit Classroom 2.0 at: http://www.classroom20.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network Recordings: Session recordings will be posted almost immediately after a session is completed. Look to the conference menu for a link to the recordings page. To continue correspondence with a session presenter and attendees, look for the presentation discussion post here.

On Student-Centered/Created, Exploratory Learning Experiments (Submitted by Jim Ross)

At the Speed of Learning Posted: 20 Mar 2013 03:21 PM PDT My third graders have been studying the Iditarod race and tracking musher data online during the past few weeks.  Take a look at the data available on the mushers, like first place winner Mitch  Seavey.   Graphing, data analysis, addition, subtraction, addition, averages, and so much more become real as students follow the race online, tracking their own selected musher.  As a part of the study, we built our own sleds.  I cleaned out the art supplies and covered an entire table with random stuff. Popsicle sticks. Cardboard. Cotton. Yarn. Bubble Wrap. Recycled items.  The goal?  To build a sled that would carry a small bag of musher supplies (bingo chips) down the hill (a table leaned down on two legs) at the fastest speed possible.  The class dove into the supplies, building, researching sled designs, and recreating their own little sleds in small teams. When we raced? The sleds with cotton on the bottom hesitated to start.  The sleds with wood bottoms? Zoomed to the bottom.  Friction. Force. Motion. Energy. Collaboration. Data. The reflections afterward? They not only understood friction, but they applied it to their own experiences.  All of this from a pile of craft supplies, a real-life race, and morning spent creating and exploring.   Even better? They applied what they learned to the real sleds on snow, ice, and rock mushing  through Alaska. I could have given them a pattern to follow. I could have just asked them to just read a chapter about force and motion and write some defintions.  I could have even made a sled and demonstrated for them. Instead? I got out of their way.  A pile of materials engaged them, and our race at the end allowed them to make comparisons, draw conclusions, and keep it real.  They were solving problems, working as a team, and creating.  They were learning.

Partnership with Community Design Center - Involving Students in Community Design - Field Trip!

http://www.communitydc.org/

Student-Centered Design Example - In Practice

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Towards the Second Build: Consultation and conversations

http://openlearningspaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/towards-second-build-consultation-and.html?showComment=1357224420764#c5305788718051364437

Our consultation process and living our norm of ‘Value the Voices’ has continued with our year 2, 3 and 4 students. A team of teachers in Learning Hub Two worked alongside children in a number of different ways. Some students focused on existing spaces and how they felt about them, others on potential new spaces and what they would like to see. Data was gathered using drawings, photographs, models and conversations.

How do you sincerely listen to a large group of students and for it not to become token consultation? Working with a group of close to seventy students produces a staggering mass of data- some great learning for us around student voice and how to get the most from it, and personally as well, just about to launch into a research project.

The important thing seemed to us to extract key themes that were raised by a number of children, whilst still hanging onto the individuality and creativity that individuals brought along. So a number of students were interviewed afterwards either individually or in small groups. In general these interviews were carried out with children who contributed elements that in essence added something new, without being unrealistic (more about this soon!).

Existing spaces

Initial learning was done with Hub Two students gathering data about like and dislikes in the existing spaces. Armed with cameras, small groups of children took a series of photos of places they liked and disliked around our hub, glued these to a plan, added ‘Like’ or “Dislike’ symbols, and were then invited to comment and justify their decisions. In general students focused on the positive aspects of their spaces and were quite pragmatic about furniture, layout and facilities such as sinks, bathrooms and Comments often referred to elements within the space such as computers or furniture rather than the space itself.

One group commented that:

I like it because the table is mobile (picture of the back of the X4 teaching station).

I like this space because I can concentrate when I’m learning (picture of beanbags in the breakout room).

I like this space because it’s quiet most of the time (picture of the shield table at the end of the hub).

I like this space because it can shut its doors and it will be quiet (picture of breakout room).

I like this space because I can get supplies from here, that are organized in tote-trays (picture of tote-trays).

I don’t like this place because it is not tidy (book shelves)

Another group commented that:

I like this because it tells you what you are doing (picture of Literacy Tumble on the wall).

I like this because it tells you what stage you are in (picture of Reading progressions on the wall).

I like this because it tells the teacher who’s here (picture of guardian group roll).

I like seeing our pictures (picture of wall mounted TV).

I like this because it shows our clay and you can look at it (picture of clay artwork display on table).

Other common features that children commented on and liked were:

·      Coloured ‘welcome couch’

·      Large space where the entire hub could meet

·      That there was lots of space- easy to find somewhere to learn

·      Spaces behind furniture where children could sit

·      Wall mounted TV

·      Corners where they could sit and learn

·      Coloured glass

Possible Spaces

Students were invited to put together designs for possible hubs. These were completed either individually or collaboratively. Some chose to draw and others built possible spaces using construction materials. Both of these were used as a basis for conversation, much of which was captured on video. A number of students participated in collecting video data, where they explained in greater detail what was involved in their design. They were also able to respond to questions about why they had included certain elements and what their thinking was.

Interestingly the learning spaces that children drew were mainly rectangular and often with small rooms coming off the main area. Children have really adopted the concept of working alongside teachers in a more central space and then moving out to learn more independently. Children often drew multiple small rooms as components of the larger space, often with designated purposes. One students design for example includes a larger space and then a number of smaller spaces to be used for: science, private learning and music. Another’s included a designated maths room, a reading space and a teacher’s room. Did teachers need their own room we asked “they might need their own space but would have to keep it tidy!” came the response.

There was a strong sense of purposeful spaces resonating with this group of children, for example science or specific facilities for cooking. When asked if this space would be exclusively for the use by their learning hub children commented that it would be ok for another hub to use the space too, and for them to have an alternatively purposed shared area.

The pragmatism continues into bathrooms. A number of children drew what they described as ‘private toilets’ accessible only by students in that particular hub. When questioned further about these they described wanting the toilets close so that ‘if I got really into my learning and was busting to go to the toilet, I could get there quickly’. In general the point was that proximity not exclusivity was the key. The toilets would be ok outside, as long as they were close (It is possible that children considered that the new hubs would have to utilise existing toilets).

Children commented on the small breakout rooms being quiet places where they could concentrate. They were able to close the doors and work undisturbed. This raises the question of how many breakout spaces a hub might need and how many need to be closeable.

Sinks and wet space areas were a common theme in the drawings, frequently appearing in the corners or ends of the hub. It was felt that the wet space certainly needed to be larger than existing lino areas and positioned away from the main thoroughfare.

A number of children commented on the desirability for more that one level within the space, with either a drop down or a rise up. One commented on the ‘Staircase to nowhere’ idea of a set of stairs with a small landing on them, one on a mezzanine level, another on a sunken area.

Bag storage was initially an issue at school and was solved with the aid of a project involving a team of students and a design expert. Some children commented that it would be better to have the bags indoors, out of the wind and rain.

Emerging Themes: The main themes to emerge from Hub Two students were:

·      A space large enough for the entire hub to meet.

·      Toilets in close proximity

·      Internal bag storage

·      Sinks and wet spaces away from the centre of the room

·      Inclusion of ‘quiet spaces’

·      Purposeful spaces that could be shared with other hubs

·      More than one level

·      Corners and spaces behind furniture- idea of ‘secret spaces’

The consultation continues…

Possibilities Thinking - Ripley's Aquarium

http://www.ripleyaquariums.com/gatlinburg/