Most schools offer “History,” and many provide “Study Hall.” What if we offered “News?” Various points of entry for current events and modern journalism could be explored. By nature, the topic is transdisciplinary and PBL-rich. I can imagine weaving in every discipline. In “Studio Hall,” learners of all ages could use time to create, not just to complete (Study Hall’s focus).
At TEDxAtlanta: Community on Tuesday, I heard many amazing thinkers and doers. Among them, Rhonda Lowry shared the idea that networked literacy is essential – that we must value relational connections over industrial-age containers (like…bell schedules?!). At virtually all the TED and TEDx events, we hear from amazing folks that are making positive differences in the world. What if we tried 1/2 time with the traditional departmentalized subjects and re:purposed the resulting 1/2 time as “grand challenge curriculum.” We could explore and attack the various challenges of our “real world” and benefit mightily from the problem-solving and transdisciplinary studies.
[My word count today is 95. I embrace that failure! Thanks for reading the extra 50+%. I could write for WEEKS and MONTHS just on this topic!]
Are you wondering how to engage students in more real-world learning? Are you looking for inspiration for and examples of project-based learning that connects students and adults with authentic issues challenging our citizenry? I am. John Hunter, Jamie Baker, and The Martin Institute help me do so…
“World Peace Game Creator John Hunter Named Martin Institute Fellow”
Press release from January 5, 2012, by The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence…gives details of partnership between Martin Institute and John Hunter, provides information on film about John Hunter’s classroom approach, and offers dates for summer institute on developing curriculum and instruction that innovates like the World Peace Games
“Can you spare 27 minutes for learning and world peace?”
Blog post from June 3, 2011, on It’s About Learning – about John Hunter TED talk
“#PBL examples, courtesy of TEDxWomen”
Blog post from January 11, 2012, on It’s About Learning – about finding examples and inspirations for PBL…links to two other posts about PBL
Whatever it is I think I see becomes a PBL to me! [sung to the tune of 1977 Tootsie Roll commercial embedded below]
If you were alive and watching TV in the mid to late 1970s, then perhaps you remember this 30 second advertisement from Tootsie Roll…
Simply replace “tootsie roll” in the jingle with “PBL.” Occasionally, my wife and sons will catch me singing this around the house. Truly, just about everything I see becomes a PBL idea to me. This visioning, though, is the result of purposeful and deliberate practice, as I have tried to grow in my capacity to develop “uppercase PBL” opportunities.
On January 4, 2012, I published a blog post about “Contemplating pbl vs. PBL.” In the post, I constructed a two-by-two matrix that helps explain how I think one can move along a spectrum of “lowercase pbl” (essentially project-oriented learning) to “uppercase PBL” in which learners are addressing genuine community challenges and engaging with authentic audiences of co-interested citizens. But how does one even think of such capital PBL ideas?
Based on countless conversations over the past few years, I get the feeling that more than a few educators struggle with the notion of originating and implementing uppercase PBL ideas. Actually, I think the struggle resides more in the implementation than in the origination, but that may need to be its own separate blog post. For now, let’s stick to the topic of originating, or concepting, the uppercase PBL ideas – creating the grand challenges that tend to integrate studies and promote community engagement from our student-learners and ourselves.
A Habit of Seeing and Recording
Concepting and brainstorming ideas for PBL is as simple as developing a habit of seeing and recording. Some may feel that such is easier said than done, but I believe it is really that easy. To form a habit, of course, one must commit to trying and rehearsing. Anyone with vision can develop a habit of seeing and recording, but it does take practice – just like anything else. In today’s world, though, the tools at our disposal make it easier and easier to develop a habit of seeing and archiving potential PBL ideas. Keeping a digital observation journal is a fabulous practice and discipline, if you want to build a resource pool of possible PBL opportunities.
I imagine there are countless ways to keep an observation journal. In essence, though, an observation journal is simply a space in which to record thoughts, questions, and images about the things that one sees while walking around. Because I almost always have my iPhone in my pocket, I rely heavily on this tool to keep my observation journal. As I walk around school and the greater Atlanta area, I often take pictures of things that raise my curiosity. For example, over the Christmas and winter break, I walked my dog quite a bit, and I captured the following images around a few bridges traversing Nancy Creek – the bridges are very close to my school, and Nancy Creek runs through my school campus.
Just from recording these images with my iPhone, I am wondering about fieldwork investigations of the science, math, economics, and history of Nancy Creek. Myriad questions come to mind…
Often, to record these images and questions, I upload my pictures and observations to an email-based blog system called Posterous. Then, with categories and tags added, I am developing a significant library of PBL ideas. In Synergy, we use a group Posterous account (see related post) so that all 26 of us are contributing to the pool of potential project ideas. During the first semester, we accumulated over 400 observation-journal posts. Out of those posts, we developed six projects together.
Imagine if a school faculty and/or the entire student body employed such a school-group Posterous (or any such collaborative tool for seeing and archiving) to collectively organize a virtual fleet of observation journal ideas! The PBL opportunities could be endless!
To develop such a habit of seeing and recording is to follow the initial practices espoused in design thinking:
At Design Thinking for Educators, where the above image was screen captured, this five-stage process of designing is more fully explained. For now, though, just think of observation journaling as a means into “discovery and ideation.” As one takes pictures and records questions for one’s observation journal, one is also engaging in a bit of “interpretation.” By posing questions and potential research curiosities, we begin to interpret what we are seeing, as we begin to formulate what projects could emerge from such wondering. To engage in such design thinking is to return to our roots as childhood learners. As Robert Fulghum has said, “LOOK!” may be the most powerful word we articulate (after mama and dada, of course!). And Mary Ann Reilly, in a recent post about “Making Art & (In)Forming Life,” reminds us of the power and potential of observation. We just have to re-open our eyes to that which we might have started to take for granted. We need to teach ourselves to see again…with that childhood enthusiasm for discovery!
A Key for Innovation
Relearning and leveraging our amazing human capacity for seeing is not just a fun way to generate ideas and enjoy the possibilities of challenge in school curricula and instruction. Seeing – as a multi-step, complex system of discovery, interpretation, and ideation – may be the key to educational innovation. In my eyes, innovation is about dreaming, teaming, seaming, and streaming. To dream is to envision. To dream is to “see” with more of our senses and being. To dream is to contemplate what could be.
May we dream big for our schools and our students. May we dream big for the challenges our world faces. Here’s to seeing…together.
LOOK!
[For more about PBL ideation, see the Buck Institute for Education resources, and the Apple Challenge Based Learning resources. I turn to these resources quite a bit!]
[Cross-posted at Inquire Within on September 3, 2012.]
In Synergy, a non-departmentalized, non-graded, transdisciplinary, community-issues-problem-solving course, we use blogging as a means to communicate and collaborate on ideas as well as to reflect and to revise thinking.
Currently we offer our learners an Action-Traction-Reaction prompt to spur their thinking, reflection, and writing.
One of our learners offers this reflection that connects his thinking about his team’s project with the ideas from Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize Wish:
Jamie Oliver, a celebrity chef, wished to educate every child about food as a use of his TED prize. I’ve known about his fight against obesity and eating right since learning about his TV show in 6th grade, so this wish makes sense to me. He’s creating a
Strong, sustainable movement
to educate every child about food.
The core of this action is to create a movement. This core action could be applied to my project, because in my project we are trying to get people to clean up after themselves, and stop cutting in line. Both of those problems are just bad examples that people have seen and copied. Creating a movement would create new standards in the community for cleanliness in the lunchroom, and could reverse the bad examples in place there.
For Jamie’s wish, he wants to create an online community and also a movement. He said
The grassroots movement must also challenge corporate America to support meaningful programs that will change the culture of junk food.
I didn’t know what a grassroots movement is, so I looked it up. I came up with this. “A grassroots movement (often referenced in the context of a political movement) is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures.”
For Jamie’s project, he is relying on creating a following, that would create the foundation for his project and help spread the message. But he also would like to create traveling kitchens and a traveling food theater to make his project entertaining and interactive. From my perspective, the traction for this project is based on two components: people and interaction. This is a good formula for other projects who are looking to gain traction in a community. You draw the people in with interaction, and then rely on them to feel passionate and spread the word.
In the comment section of the article, many people were eager to partner with Jamie’s project to support and help organize his ideas. I think that the biggest way to attract reaction like this, is to be backed by TED! But the other large factor is that he’s addressing a large problem and is presenting a sound project plan. Creating this plan is an easy thing to do in Synergy to make sure our projects look attractive in the eyes of the administrators inside and outside of Westminster. If our projects only look half-baked, they won’t attract support.
“Grassroots.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.
[Permission to post obtained from student and student’s parent.]
Do we write to read and learn what we are thinking? Do we prototype, seek feedback, and revise? How do we connect our thinking to the ideas of others?
Shouldn’t we practice?
[Cross-posted at Experiments in Learning by Doing]
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