Tag Archives: TED

#PBL examples, courtesy of TEDxWomen

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In contemplating pbl vs. PBL, I am working to discern the spectrum of possibilities for enhancing project-based learning opportunities in schools. For me, one way to innovate and develop more powerful PBL opportunities involves practicing deliberate observation and journaling – purposeful discovery, interpretation, and ideation can set a foundation for project design and implementation.

Of course, it also helps to see examples of school-aged children engaging in learning that is rooted in real-world challenges and that is promoted through communication with authentic audiences. This morning, I was fortunate enough to have a TED talk link in my email inbox. Thanks to faculty and colleagues who are exploring the complexities of PBL and sharing, I can share these three examples of PBL that seem to fly toward that upper right quadrant of the matrix I offered on Jan. 4.

“What year are you preparing your students for?” Heidi Hayes Jacobs #TEDxNYED

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As usual, Heidi Hayes Jacobs makes some intriguing and thought-provoking points. Among them…

  • Are we educators studying television literacy and its effect on learning, especially given its force relative to print media? If not, why not?
  • Are we upgrading (making strategic replacements of outdated curriculum)?
  • Are we keeping “classroom curiosity” lists to archive the fascinating questions and researching of our learners? Or are we too busy “covering what has to be covered?”
  • “I can’t think of a better time to be a public learner…which is what you must be if you want to teach.”
  • Social production democratizes learning.

Take 17 minutes and explore theses and other provocations yourself. Or don’t.

[Note: In her talk, Heidi mentions “contagion” from a video that kicked off TEDxNYED. I bet that is Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk. If you have not seen it, and if you are interested in PBL with a “capital P,” then watch it. Or don’t.]

New creation: culinary, jazz-fusion luminescence in teaching – PLCs as surgical-musical-chefs

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Working to understand better the functions and processes of PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) – this is a constant pursuit and area of deep investigation and learning for me. I am coming to believe, more and more, that high-functioning PLCs are like some hybrid-cross consisting of the following parts: chefs, surgical teams, and jazz musicians.

The three TED talks below are interesting and intriguing in their own, content-specific right. However, I think all three offer metaphorical meta-lessons about the nature of PLCs – teams of teachers working to learn with each other for the ultimate purpose of enhanced student learning. All three TED talks, when woven together into a common braid, speak to the power of CREATING SOMETHING NEW AS A TEAM. Great PLCs are like the innovative team of chefs at Moto – stretching concept and experimenting for fulfilling and engaging one’s appetite and taste buds (analogous to quenching the thirst for knowledge and wisdom). Great PLCs are like the collaborating surgeons who have discovered that luminescent dyes can be employed to light-up that which needs to be preserved and that which needs to be cut out (analogous to curriculum re-design and systemic formative assessment practices). Great PLCs are like the improvisational harmony of a jazz quartet that measures their successes by their level of responsiveness rather than by any sort of fixed-mindset worrying about mistakes (analogous to the thoughtful development of teamwork and use of RTI – response to intervention). Collectively, the three talks also point to the balance of art and science that seems essential to crafting the alloy which is a team of people working together to CREATE.

The Creation Project

This past semester, the English 7 team of the Junior High PLC developed a student-learning challenge about the nature of creation and creativity. This team of teachers acted in that careful blend of artists and scientists, and they utilized the professional practices of lesson study and instructional rounds to develop a common lesson and common assessment for their classes of English. Instead of simply sitting and being consumers of creation-archetype understanding, the students would become world creators themselves. [This reminds me of a recent post from Jonathan Martin: “Fab Labs and Makerbots: ‘Turning Consumers into Creators’ at our School.” Who knows…this may even partially inspire the next iteration of the world creations described below!]

Below you can find a Scribd document that provides more details about the learning challenge created by this team of teacher-learners. To me, they behaved something like that team of innovative chefs at Moto…that team of integrated-thinking surgeons pioneering the use of luminescent surgery…that team of improvisationally-responsive jazz musicians. This team of teachers is creating together in harmony – they are prototyping a product, as well as a process for using lesson study and instructional rounds to derive a better dish, a more successful surgery, a more beautiful harmony. They are innovating and creating. This stretch will provide potential for a further stretch next time. Their muscles are learning to work this way – a way that has been foreign to egg-crate culture schools for far too long.

“I’m passing along the “nuts and bolts” of our “What in the World?” Creativity Project, which is the product of our collaborative work in the 7th PLT…what a gift!”

What In the World – Creation Project (used with permission)

Peer Visit – Mackey visit from Snyder 11-16-11 (used with permission)

I am working on a blog post about this Creation Project – from the principal’s point of view. I plan to include the actual assignment document, and I am hoping to have a few more artifacts that point to ways that we (teachers, educators, etc.) can work on “teachers working in teams” and “integrated studies.” I think your peer visit serves as a superb artifact of how ideas and lessons can “seep” and “ooze” across disciplinary borders when teachers visit each other’s classrooms. [Brief backstory (from email to teacher requesting permission to use this peer visit)]

Now, we have a teacher of the subject of history interacting with a teacher of the subject of English. What interconnected learning and integrated studies might emerge from this seed? In other areas, we have World Cultures teachers teaming with Science 6 teachers to create a semester learning-challenge on global climate change in various world regions. We have PE and biology teachers crafting ideas of courses devoted to the understanding of the human body from an integrated approach through anatomy and exercise physiology.

We have distributed R&DIY “culinary, jazz-fusion luminescence” developing among our learners – teachers and students. Those are ideas worth spreading. Additionally, those teachers are inspiring me to think about the worlds that I would contribute to making. Hmmm….

A riff on school thinking…inspired by “There are no mistakes on the bandstand.” Stefon Harris

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Listening. Responding. Refusing to bully one’s ways. Pulling ideas. Improvising. Innovating. Working with the color and emotional palette. Collaborating in concert with one’s team and one’s band. Making beautiful music. [Watch the TED below, and more of those phrases may be put into greater context.]

I think a lot about what school could be like. I love school. I have always loved school. But I think school can be better.

This morning, I viewed the four TED talks that were awaiting me in my RSS reader:

I learned about “Captchas,” and I learned about spider-silk biomimicry. I learned about MRI-focused ultrasound for non-invasive surgery, and I learned about jazz improv. But I learned about so much more than just these things. As a whole, I learned about people working to make things better…to make things more beautiful. From the whole, I learned some meta-lessons about innovation and improvisation.

When will school reflect the ideas that Stefon Harris espouses in his talk? When might we see the only “mistakes” in school as those moments which reveal that we failed to respond as deep listeners? Where are these types of innovations and improvs happening in order to enhance schools in ways that we are working to enhance language translation, armor and connective fibers, medical procedures, and jazz music? Where is the real R&D? Where are the jam sessions? Rest assured, there are some! There must be more!

I believe teacher teams – PLCs (professional learning communities) – can function very much like that quartet that is playing with Stefon Harris. I have been blessed to be a part of such a team in the Junior High at Westminster for quite some time. But we might need to think of ourselves less as pianists, drummers, bassists, and vibraphone-ists – less like history teachers, math teachers, science teachers, and English teachers. We may need to think of ourselves more like a quartet…a band – more like teachers of children, problem-finders and problem-solvers, innovators and improvisationalists, and challenge-facers. Then, our efforts could begin to work more like pulling ideas and listening and responding. And we administrators should be making space and time for such work. We should not restrict with regulations. We should be more concerned with pedagogy and practice than with lawsuits and legal. We should facilitate – make easier to accomplish.

Schools that operated as such would not make mistakes on the bandstand – we would make music!

How would you listen and respond to this riff? What would you add to this palette of thinking? Will you play an E or an F#? How will I consequently listen and respond? Let’s make schools better…let’s tune them to create more beautiful music!

Can we play together? Wanna jam?

“Restoration of the ability to perceive beauty is inspiring” – Charles Limb

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Charles Limb performs cochlear implantation, a surgery that treats hearing loss and can restore the ability to hear speech. But as a musician too, Limb thinks about what the implants lack: They don’t let you fully experience music yet. (There’s a hair-raising example.) At TEDMED, Limb reviews the state of the art and the way forward. (“About this talk” description at TED.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_building_the_musical_muscle.html)

At this point, I have watched Charles Limb’s talk multiple times. I am intrigued by it. For me, the talk elicits all kinds of excited thinking about possible projects of integrated studies. In my mind’s eye, I can see a team of student-learners, guided by a pair of co-teacher-learners, studying the intersection of music, physics, biology, robotic medicine, and beauty. Who knows, perhaps such a course would plant the seed that would grow into the physician-researcher who advances cochlear implants to the next level.

But, as regular readers here will surely anticipate, I am also touched by a more symbolic message inherent in Limb’s talk. I wonder: Are we working with students in our schools who have grown to be partially “deaf or blind” to the beauty around them? As young children – particularly around ages two to seven – people seem defined by their sense of wonder, exploration, and sense of searching and discovery. Often I worry that we dull those senses when we insist that children sit so long inside of school houses and study disjointed, disconnected facts.

How can we educators help to enhance the senses of our student learners? For that matter, how can we help to enhance the senses of all of the learners in a school house? How can we restore the ability to perceive beauty and inspire? Certainly, I think we do this for some students, but do we do this for all of the students in our care? Does school allow students to fully experience the wonder and beauty of their world? How can we ensure better that it does so? What would that school look like, smell like, taste like, and sound like? What an adventure!