Tag Archives: PBL

Project-based learning

Inspired by possibilities of #PBL – how are we engaging our students with problem finding and solving?

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Two emails and a nearby creek have me giddy about #PBL possibilities. Yep, that’s right – I said giddy. I admit that I have an issue – whatever it is I think I see… becomes a PBL to me.

Giddy-up #1: Soccket! Yesterday, my long-time co-teacher and learning partner @jgough sent me a link to this amazing invention – a soccer ball that functions as a generator. Incredible – Uncharted Play: Innovate. Play. Empower. Watch the video, at least!

Giddy-up #2: Hopscotch Detroit! Thanks to a subscription to The Daily Good, I was invited into a story about a community building the largest hopscotch court in history. The goal – to encourage a city to find communion in playing with each other.

Giddy-up #3: Seeing students in Peachtree Creek. I wish I could give you a link to this one. As I was driving to work this morning, I noticed a school activity vehicle (a.k.a. “bus”) stopped near Memorial Park. It appeared that high school students were collecting water samples in Peachtree Creek. Yes! I have dreamed for a few years that more schools would engage our city creeks in such a way. I only with I knew who it was; I’d love to talk with them about what they’re trying to accomplish.

So, when I read and see these examples, I imagine a cohort of students posing questions and curiosities to a facilitator (known as a teacher in the olden days). Through expert contextual guiding, the facilitator enables the students to pursue their own passions. One group is interested in energy, and one of the team members had recently read about using a piece of playground equipment to pump water in an African village. Another team member wondered what other play things could be turned into energy generators. The soccket – or something like it – is born. In another group, the student-learners are crazed at thinking that they can turn the city streets into something like an adult playground. Perhaps they’ve watched Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk about teaching kids to take charge, or maybe they’ve seen the video about turning steps into piano keys. They are inspired by the Indian children’s zebra-stripping and the feet symphonies of subway exiters, and they want to go large scale to with a Hopscotch Detroit idea. And a third group feels passionate about improving the water quality of the creek that runs in front of their Atlanta homes. They decide to do something about it, and their facilitator organizes an activity vehicle to cart them to the shores of the waste-ladden waters.

Oh, the possibilities! There’s science, math, English and language arts, history, sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, design and city planning, architecture, prototyping, community interviewing and communication, making a difference with things that matter and affecting real audiences.

It’s not 50 minutes of math, 50 minutes of science, 50 minutes of English, and homework to check and grade the next day. It’s as much transformational as informational. It’s not unstructured and loose; it’s hyper-structured and necessarily tight. It requires more of technology as field equipment than just a digital replacement for a notebook. It’s engaging and inspirational. And it’s highly and gloriously doable.

But more schools could be doing it.

Just imagine…

No, don’t stop there. Get started…

What’s your school’s pedagogical master plan? Will your students systemically have such experiences?

They could be.

Another piece of “why:” Tis more blessed to give than to receive…and school change

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At bedtime, my two boys, my wife, and I often return to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.

For me, the story has always been aspirational. Throughout my life, I hope to grow closer to the end of the spectrum where giving is more valued than receiving. In the book, of course, the boy takes and takes from the tree and his happiness is only temporary and fleeting – it lasts until he needs the next thing…maybe shorter. But the tree finds its happiness and joy from giving, and the tree’s joy seems to be more permanent and long-lasting.

This weekend, as we read The Giving Tree, I was struck by the lessons that this story could teach school. I am constantly amazed by the latest generations’ generosity. As a school principal, I had countless students come to me seeking permission to have a fund raiser for a special cause to help others. I had numerous others want to stage events to make a positive difference in the world. In fact, my school had to create a policy to deal with the number of requests for coordination and organization reasons.

Interestingly, most, if not all, of these special requests existed outside the curriculum. Shouldn’t such giving, and work, and lessoning BE the curriculum? Or at least more of the curriculum?

Schools seems so geared to getting. So much of the fundamental set-up is about what each student gets, as they enroll in math, English, science, history, etc. We send them from class to class to be filled like vessels with departmental knowledge so that they can “get” into a good college and so that they can “get” a good job.

What if school were re-imagined and re-purposed to be about what students can give? What they can contribute to the world now.

This is why I feel so passionately about PBL – project-based learning, problem-based learning, passion-based learning, place-based learning, etc. This is why I love examples like Kiran Bir Sethi’s Riverside School. This is why I feel so strongly about school curricula being more integrated and participatory in design-thinking and problem solving.

This is another piece of why people talk of 21st C education.

Twentieth-century education was modeled on the widget-creating, assembly-line system. Send the product down the line to have parts added and reservoirs filled. It was about 1.0. It was about receiving, like radios taking the signals from the towers.

Twenty-first-century education can be about giving. It is 2.0 and 3.0. Students can be co-creators of systemic improvement in the world – from better design, to water solutions, to energy enhancements, to health improvements, to more powerful robotics, to improved communications tools, to…, to…, to….

Tis better to give than to receive. Let’s facilitate kids “giving an education” instead of just “getting an education.”

Does any of this make any sense?

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Young people today think in terms of fixing the world,…

Young people today think in terms of fixing the world, by making things, and selling them. Selling them is just the necessary end point of the process.

William Deresiewicz, Writer and Critic speaking at CreativeMornings/Portland (*watch the talk)

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Related Posts:

[“A piece of ‘why,'” A piece of ‘what,'” and A piece of ‘how'” are strands of a series on why school needs to change, what about school needs to change, and how schools might navigate the change.]

Process Post and Resources: Contemplating 21st C Ed, PBL, and Common Core State Standards – a Thought Board in Progress

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[Disclaimer: This post may not make any sense to anyone but me. I am researching 21st C education trends, project-based learning, social and civic responsibility, school transformation, and Common Core State Standards. All through the lens of strategic re-design of school of the future. What follows below is some of the thought-board I am developing, and I felt compelled to share at least some of what I am discovering and thinking about…]

Today, during a Skype conversation with a trusted and highly respected educational colleague, I heard a couple of interesting threads of commentary that have led me on a fascinating research exploration for much of the day.

One of the folks here says PBL is dead. I don’t agree, but there is some strong movement against it.

We call him Pele because he knows where the ball is going, and the ball is currently going to the Common Core State Standards.

You breathe rarified air, and there are tremendous hurdles to implementing PBL in an environment overrun with standardized testing and the Common Core.

While I think that significant, meaningful PBL (capital P) has been largely non-existent in the heavily industrial-age influenced school system of the 20th century, I think PBL has thrived as a human learning paradigm for millennia, and I think PBL is alive and well as a learning methodology. In fact, I think PBL dominates learning before formal schooling, and I believe that PBL dominates the workplace of almost all jobs (if not, ALL jobs). I believe that school transformation and enhancement will necessarily include and integrate PBL. Furthermore, I think the Common Core State Standards not only support PBL, but I believe they demand it! [And I continue to mean capital-P PBL!]

Exploring Edutopia’s Resources for Understanding the Common Core State Standards, I worked on a thought board, and I am capturing a few bits and pieces here…

Intriguing videos from Hunt Institute YouTube channel regarding the CCSS:

  • The English Language Arts Standards: Key Changes and their Evidence

    At the end of the video, David Coleman speaks of “reading like a detective and writing like an investigative journalist.” From my own studying and implementation of capital-P project-based learning, I can think of few other methodologies that create the space and opportunity for student learners to be detectives and investigative journalists who are wrestling with real-life issues that need addressing and innovating.

  • Literary Non-Fiction in the Classroom: Opening New Worlds for Students

    Watching this piece was fascinating! I was both inspired and frightened stiff. On the frightening end, I pictured teachers who take David Coleman’s analysis literally as the recommended pedagogy for deconstructing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birmingham letter and removing many possibilities for self-motivated discovery and heart-touching. At the inspiring end, I was moved by MLK’s language and by thinking about a group of students searching for this letter after engaging with a community issue about fairness, justice, equality, and rights. I imagined this letter as a digestible resource for students who created a need-to-know about the letter because of the context with which they approached the letter. [Interestingly, I never experienced this letter as part of my formal, school-based education. In fact, I am embarrassed to admit that this video viewing may have been the first time I read the entire letter. The content reminded me of many of the reasons that I am working for school reform and transformational enhancement.]

Quotes from the CCSS website that point to PBL:

Research—both short, focused projects (such as those commonly required in the workplace) and longer term in depth research —is emphasized throughout the standards but most prominently in the writing strand since a written analysis and presentation of findings is so often critical.
– Writing: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts

An important focus of the speaking and listening standards is academic discussion in one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class settings. Formal presentations are one important way such talk occurs, but so is the more informal discussion that takes place as students collaborate to answer questions, build understanding, and solve problems.
– Speaking and Listening: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts

The standards help prepare students for real life experience at college and in 21st century careers.
– Language: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts

The standards stress not only procedural skill but also conceptual understanding, to make sure students are learning and absorbing the critical information they need to succeed at higher levels – rather than the current practices by which many students learn enough to get by on the next test, but forget it shortly thereafter, only to review again the following year.
– Math: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-mathematics

  • The high school standards call on students to practice applying mathematical ways of thinking to real world issues and challenges; they prepare students to think and reason mathematically.
  • The high school standards set a rigorous definition of college and career readiness, by helping students develop a depth of understanding and ability to apply mathematics to novel situations, as college students and employees regularly do.
  • The high school standards emphasize mathematical modeling, the use of mathematics and statistics to analyze empirical situations, understand them better, and improve decisions. For example, the draft standards state: “Modeling links classroom mathematics and statistics to everyday life, work, and decision-making. It is the process of choosing and using appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze empirical situations, to understand them better, and to improve decisions. Quantities and their relationships in physical, economic, public policy, social and everyday situations can be modeled using mathematical and statistical methods. When making mathematical models, technology is valuable for varying assumptions, exploring consequences, and comparing predictions with data.”
    – Math: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-mathematics

Literacy equals mastery across academic disciplines.
– Callout in Hunt Institute video about CCSS

At the intersection and confluence of 21st century education and project-based learning, we would have:

  1. Personal learning, as explained by @MaryAnnReilly
  2. Education Systems that Support Innovation, as questioned by @FusionJones (Aran Levasseur)
  3. Greater understanding of What does it mean to be learned?, by David Warlick
  4. Commitment to Helping Students Become Active Citizens, by Margaret Haviland
  5. Schools that play matchmaker between world issues and adolescent energy, by Bo Adams
  6. Educators designing high-quality PBL to engage students with learning innovation, by Thom Markham
  7. Lessons from Lehrer’s Imagine for Cultivating Student Creativity, by Jonathan E. Martin
  8. Design thinking and iterative prototyping built into the program [see MVPS, Nuevo School, Beaver Country Day School & NuVu, etc.]
  9. Purposeful presentations over PowerPoint(less) ones, by Jeff Delp
  10. Value the Immeasurable, by Will Richardson

Videos that have profoundly shaped my viewpoint on 21st Century Education and the Future of Schools…Schools of the Future:

It’s all connected! And there’s so much more! It’s about learning.

I dream a school…that plays matchmaker between world issues and adolescent energy

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Do you know about Innocentive? They match innovation needs with innovation providers – that whole demand and supply thing. In addition to doing great work, they also make a great metaphor for what school could be.

I believe schools could be structured this way.

Adolescent energy, resourcefulness, and desire to engage relevance
+
Issues of the world
_________________

Engaging curriculum that positively influences the world

Imagine the F=ma implications, in a social justice application of Newton’s Law, if a majority of schools employed the collective mass of our students…in integrated studies, project-based learning formats…to make huge dents in world issues. The size of that “additive amoeba” (think collecting broken up play-dough into one mass), could really make a difference. [Yes, I want to embed Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk right here, but I’m not gonna do it. Gonna use Jamie Drummond’s instead.]

I dream a school that crowd-sources with myriad other schools to impact the world now. Imagine the power of that!

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Related resource:

Orchestrating Conflict, Developing Experiments…and Carving Butter: Adaptive Leadership #PBL Ponderings

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When information enters the mind, it self-organizes into patterns and ruts much like the hot water on butter. New information automatically flows into the preformed grooves. After a while, the channels become so deep it takes only a bit of information to activate an entire channel. This is the pattern recognition and pattern completion process of the brain. Even if much of the information is out of the channel, the pattern will be activated. The mind automatically corrects and completes the information to select and activate a pattern. (Michalko, 2011)

So, how do we get the water to flow in a different pattern on the surface of the butter? Perhaps we need to “orchestrate conflict and develop experiments.” (Creelman, 2009) [See “PROCESS POST: Adaptive Leaders, Orchestrating Conflict, and Developing Experiments…School DNA Evolution“]

In the metaphor of the hot water and butter, perhaps a leader can use some prototype of dams and locks to re-channel the water into new patterns. Perhaps, the surface of the butter could be shaved smooth for a new pattern to form with the next cup of hot water. Regardless, conflict orchestrated on the system is necessary to affect the pattern and flow of the water on the butter.

Scientists used to believe that the brain became “hardwired” early in life and couldn’t change later on. Now researchers such as Dr. Michael Merzenich, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, say that the brain’s ability to change — its “plasticity” — is lifelong. If we can change, then why don’t we?  [emphasis added from my Diigo note taking]

Merzenich starts by talking about rats. You can train a rat to have a new skill. The rat solves a puzzle, and you give it a food reward. After 100 times, the rat can solve the puzzle flawlessly. After 200 times, it can remember how to solve it for nearly its lifetime. The rat has developed a habit. [Also see William James Talks on Teaching re: habit] It can perform the task automatically because its brain has changed. Similarly, a person has thousands of habits — such as how to use a pen — that drive lasting changes in the brain. For highly trained specialists, such as professional musicians, the changes actually show up on MRI scans. Flute players, for instance, have especially large representations in their brains in the areas that control the fingers, tongue, and lips, Merzenich says. “They’ve distorted their brains.” [emphasis added from my Diigo note taking]

Businesspeople, like flutists, are highly trained specialists, and they’ve distorted their brains, too. An older executive “has powers that a young person walking in the door doesn’t have,” says Merzenich. He has lots of specialized skills and abilities. A specialist is a hard thing to create, and is valuable for a corporation, obviously, but specialization also instills an inherent “rigidity.” The cumulative weight of experience makes it harder to change.

How, then, to overcome these factors? Merzenich says the key is keeping up the brain’s machinery for learning. (Deutchman, 2007)

Then, with the nature of change in the world today, adaptive leadership becomes a necessity, not a luxury. How might a school leader, working in earnest to guide the change happening in schools, orchestrate the conflict that could keep up a faculty’s collective brain machinery for learning?

If a school leader pays attention to the wider educational environment, then he or she would know that PBL (Project-Based Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Place-Based Learning, etc.) is a powerful trend and force in schooling for the future. But what if the school leader does not possess the personal knowledge capacity for PBL? How might he or she expect to lead such an exploration and R&D effort at his or her school? She could turn to her orchestra and scientists – the creators that we call teachers and students.

Idea #1

In Creative Thinkering, Michalko related a story about Rite-Solutions:

Rite-Solutions combined the architecture of the stock exchange with the architecture of an in-house company stock market and created a stock market for ideas. The company’s internal exchange is called Mutual Fun [love the name!]. In this private exchange, any employee can offer a proposal to create a new product or spin-off, to solve a problem, to acquire new technologies or companies and so on. These proposals become stocks and are given ticker symbols identifying the proposals.

As reported in the New York Times, “Fifty-five stocks are listed on the company’s internal stock exchange. Each stock comes with a detailed description – called an expect-us, as opposed to a prospectus – and begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in ‘opinion money’ to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock or volunteering to work on the project.”

The result has been a resounding success. (Michalko, 2011)

Schools could totally do this! I can completely imagine a faculty being empowered to select the most exciting projects through “price bidding” and implementing the experiments together. Could such an approach even resolve some of the issues with the current stick of butter…school system, I mean? Would the decisions about what PBL to implement feel less top-down and more grassroots? Would the mental framing of such a process cause a fun, game like psychology? Would it unify and thread the projects through the different disciplines and departments? Don’t you think it’s worth a try?

I can picture faculty meetings being fun debriefs of how the faculty-decided-upon projects are going. Teams could celebrate short-term successes, share bright spots, discuss conundrums and challenges, share failures and poor/early prototypes. Video could be used to capture the classroom experiences with students and the faculty debriefs. These videos could be integrated into presentation and conversations with parents and alums so that they could be a part of the transformations and experimentations [Hat tip to Bob Dillon in Missouri!]. Faculty leaders could exchange stories with other faculties engaging in similar experiments with various PBL developments. We could learn together and keep up our brain machinery and form new patterns with our water and butter.

Idea #2

Posit Science has a “fifth-day strategy,” meaning that everyone spends one day a week working in a different discipline. Software engineers try their hand at marketing. Designers get involved in business functions. “Everyone needs a new project instead of always being in a bin,” Merzenich says. “A fifth-day strategy doesn’t sacrifice your core ability but keeps you rejuvenated. In a company, you have to worry about rejuvenation at every level. So ideally you deliberately construct new challenges. For every individual, you need complex new learning. Innovation comes about when people are enabled to use their full brains and intelligence instead of being put in boxes and controlled.” (Deutchman, 2007) [emphasis added from my Diigo note taking]

To test new channels in the butter of departmentalized subject delivery, every fifth class rotation, subjects could be combined into double periods. If there were an art class 3rd period and a science class 4th period, they could meet as one, double-class. Teachers could serve as facilitators of the student-generated projects that exist at the intersections of art and science. In the doing, the art teacher could stretch himself in the domains of science, co-teaching, class management, etc. The science teacher could enhance her knowledge and understanding of art, performance-based assessment, design thinking, etc. If another set of schedules revealed that a math section and a history section met 3rd and 4th periods, those could be combined for the fifth-day strategy, and students might explore such topics as historical cryptography and code breaking [hat tip to Fred Young, Laurel Bleich, Angela Jones, and Jen Lalley in Atlanta].

Thomas Edison’s lab was a big barn with worktables set up side by side that held separate projects in progress. He would work on one project for awhile and then another. His workshop was designed to allow one project to infect a neighboring one, so that moves made here might also be tried there. This method of working allowed him to constantly rethink the way he saw his projects. (Michalko, 2011)

As we sidled our “worktables” together, continuous support and scaffolding could be offered and provided to faculty because this is a very disruptive conflict to the schedule and conventions of school, as it has traditionally and habitually been administrated. Communications schema could be re-designed to invite parents and other constituents into the experiments. Partnerships might emerge with alumni business and professionals working on similar projects in their own places of work.

Imagine what we could learn from these orchestrated conflicts and developing experiments. Imagine how admin and faculty could grow to be less “us-them” and more “we” by working in such collaborative, R&D-lab experimental ways.

Imagine the never-before-thought-possible channels in the surface of the butter we could discover.

Works Cited:

Creelman, David. “Ron Heifitz: Adaptive Leadership.” Creelman Research. N.p., 2009. Web. 17 July 2012. <http://creelmanresearchlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/creelman-2009-vol-2-5-heifetz-on-adaptive-leadership.pdf&gt;.

Deutchman, Alan. “Change or Die.” Change or Die. Fast Company, 19 Dec. 2007. Web. 18 July 2012. <http://www.fastcompany.com/node/52717/print&gt;.

Michalko, Michael. Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2011. Print.

Related Work:

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. New York: Broadway, 2010. Print.

[Cross-posted at Connected Principals]