project-based-learning

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Inquiry Learning Vs. Standardized Content: Can They Coexist?

May 20, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By
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Flickr: umjanedoean

By Thom Markham

As Common Core State Standards are incorporated from school to school across the country, educators are discussing their value. It may seem that educators are arguing over whether the CCSS will roll out as a substitute No Child Left Behind curriculum or as an innovative guide to encourage inquiry rather than rote learning. In reality, as time will prove, we’re arguing over whether content standards are still appropriate.

Everyday there is less standardization of information, making it nearly impossible to decide what a tenth-grader should know. Beyond the core literacies of reading, writing, computation, and research, the world-wide culture of innovation, discovery, multi-polarity, interdisciplinary thinking, and rapid change depends on the explosive potential of the human mind, not entombed truths from the past. Increasingly, any standards-based curriculum is at odds with the outside world.

There is only one resolution to the debate. Sooner or later, inquiry-standards will take precedence over content-based standards. Education’s core task is to prepare young people to generate new ideas, filter them through a net of critical analysis and reflection, and move the ideas through a design process to create a quality product, either as an idea or a material object. Students need information, facts, and specific knowledge for a successful outcome. But that information must be gathered during the process of creation, in a usable, just-in-time format not found in “subjects.”

If you’re a teacher in tune with the needs of your students, you sense the disconnect between the curriculum and reality. You’d like the freedom to respond more directly to student needs, but standardized information and testing remains a barrier to innovative teaching.

So how can you, as a teacher, help move the dialogue forward? First, you can focus on becoming a highly-effective project based learning (PBL) teacher. When done well, PBL is the most effective method education has at the moment to introduce and practice inquiry-based education. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Common Core State Standards, inquiry learning, project-based-learning

What It Takes to Become an All Project-Based School

May 16, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By
New-Tech-students

New Tech Network

In many schools, project-based learning happens in isolated cases: in certain teachers’ classrooms here and there, or in the contexts of specific subjects. But for students to benefit from project-based learning, ideally it’s part of a school’s infrastructure — a way to approach learning holistically.

For one quickly growing network of schools, project-based learning is the crux of the entire ecosystem. New Tech Network, which was founded 15 years ago, is taking its school-wide project-based model to national scale. The organization, which offers a paid program for schools to use its model, began with a flagship school in Napa and has grown to 120 schools in 18 states, most of which are public schools.

The network has not only grown in size, but also in notoriety. President Obama visited Manor New Tech High School in Texas last week, as part of an effort to promote an education agenda focused on producing graduates that can compete in today’s global economy.

The nod from the president comes at a time when New Tech is attempting to position itself as a successful model to follow. But rather than relying on test scores and such quantifiable numbers to prove its value, New Tech’s own 2013 annual report frames success by focusing on deeper learning that can’t be measured by standardized test scores and their college readiness. Yet it’s that lack of emphasis on test scores, an all-consuming worry for many districts, that makes it more difficult for the organization to pin point numbers to tell its story.

“From where we stand, public school districts are as capable of innovative schools as charter schools.”

Here are a few of the statistics New Tech has gathered from their schools: students graduate at a rate six percent higher than the national average and enroll in college nine percent more than the average. They also persist in four-year universities at a 17 percent higher rate and 46 percent higher rate when it comes to two year colleges. Perhaps most importantly, they claim that Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, New Tech Network, personalized learning, professional development, project-based-learning, school culture

A Design Challenge to Students: Solve a Real-World Problem!

April 25, 2013 | 10:22 AM | By
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Design Learning Challenge

Creating a safe recreation space for teens; protoyping a recyclable lunch tray; setting up a water delivery system to guard against urban fires; building a public awareness campaign to combat hunger. These are just a few of examples of the types of tasks students are taking on when they participate in the Design Learning Challenge, an effort to get students to figure out how to solve real-world problems in their communities.

Combining project-based learning, with an emphasis on the arts and design thinking, this academic competition now in its third year — a partnership between the Industrial Designers Society of America, or IDSA, and the National Art Education Association, or NAEA — has more than 750 students participating this year.

Educators who enter the competition work with their students to identify a significant problem or challenge in their lives for which they can design a solution. Like most other project-based learning, the idea is that the process for designing an effective solution will get students to use Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Design Learning Challenge, project-based-learning

If Robots Will Run the World, What Should Students Learn?

April 12, 2013 | 10:39 AM | By
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istockphoto

Education reformers have been calling for a different type of education, one that nurtures creative and innovative thinkers. But for many, that future is hard to see and even harder to influence.

Science fiction writers and blockbuster movies have been predicting a world run by robots for decades, and for most of us, the fantasy has stayed in the realm of fiction. But artificial intelligence has made rapid progress and robots are becoming more a part of everyday life than many people realize. Those who study robots and their impact on life foresee a day not too far off when many jobs now held by people will be automated.

“If you can detect a pattern, you can automate it,” said Charles Fadel, founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign and a visiting practitioner at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, who spoke at the recent Learning and the Brain Conference. Fadel sees signs that robots are already becoming a part of everyday life. Google has a self-driving car. Japan recently put on a concert, attended by thousands of people, featuring a hologram popstar with a synthesized voice. Virtual models are gradually being put to work displaying the newest styles, and Watson the supercomputer whooped-on the best Jeopardy players. Signs of robotic intelligence are everywhere and educators need to be preparing students to enter a dramatically different world, Fadel said.

“The role of the educator is to channel and guide what is fundamentally an improvisational process.”

As artificial intelligence improves and slowly takes over aspects of daily life, the only way for people to continue to be useful is to “up-skill” — and that takes creativity. “Incremental creativity is just improving on something, but radical creativity is thinking something up,” Fadel said. He believes that, in time, computers will be capable of incremental creativity, slowly improving a process and building on its success. What they will never be able to do is generate a radically new idea.

“We’re being pushed upwards in abstraction, in some senses,” Fadel said. Recognizing how sophisticated computers already are, and how much better the algorithms are getting will be important as the education system evolves. Implicit in Fadel’s stark view of how artificial Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, artificial intelligence, collaborative learning, creativity, project-based-learning

Connected Learning: Tying Student Passions to School Subjects

April 3, 2013 | 8:00 AM | By
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Quest to Learn

By Ashley Williams, Youth Radio

What if your extracurricular activities weren’t just extra but a part of your academics too? New thinking on education intends to bring students’ interests into the classroom. It’s called Connected Learning and promotes the idea that students will excel in school if what they are learning is relevant to their lives, experiences, and passions. This plan is spelled out in a new report, by Mimi Ito, the research director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California Irvine.

While students would still learn core subjects like math and science, Connected Learning provides ways for students to link their classroom lessons to their lives outside the school. Ito says the objective of Connected Learning is to, “meet young people where they are in terms of their peer culture, their interest in popular culture, social media, rather than say you have to meet us where we are as adults.”

“It’s important to diversify the kinds of entry points for the kinds of pathways that young people have.”

Ito uses the Harry Potter Alliance to demonstrate how Connected Learning’s can be effective. She says, “the HPA connects young people who are inspired by the civic virtues portrayed in the Harry Potter books, and want to apply them to the real world.” This fan network organizes over social media platforms (Facebook, Livestream, Youtube, Twitter) to spread awareness and solutions to issues like, equality, and human rights, and to support of charitable causes. Literacy has been a central focus of the group. Their annual book drive has brought 85,000 donations since 2009 and contributions have helped build a library for a charter school in NYC.

Ito says another prime example of Connected Learning is at Youth Radio. The youth-driven media organization channels young peoples’ passions into education and job training. For instance, the poetry group inside Youth Radio, Remix Your Life, helps strengthen students’ writing skills, public speaking  and presentation skills while providing an outlet for us to express what we’re passionate about.

“Meet young people where they are in terms of their peer culture, their interest in popular culture, social media, rather than say you have to meet us where we are as adults.”

Here’s where Connected Learning could help close the opportunity gap. Ito says, “it’s important to diversify the kinds of entry points for the kinds of pathways that young people have.” She adds that “having their interests, their identities validated in the context of academic achievement, civic engagement” is essential to keeping students engaged. This could lead to better student Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, connected learning, design thinking, DML, Mimi Ito, project-based-learning, Quest to Learn

How to Inspire Students to Design, Invent, and Make an Impact

April 2, 2013 | 8:00 AM | By
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Scientist Profile: Inventor

By Almetria Vaba

Spark your students’ curiosity in engineering and technology by introducing them to the designers, inventors, and clever thinkers featured in PBS LearningMedia. Use their stories to illustrate various themes of study like the engineering design process and the impact of technology.

See what happens when a U.S. Paralympic athlete challenges two teams of high school students to build an automated wheelchair. Use this segment to initiate a design challenge in your own classroom. Grades 6-12

How can your students affect the world around them? Use this video segment about wind energy to illustrate the real-world impact of an innovative idea. Grades 6-13+

Get your class excited about great ideas! Introduce them to Ryan Patterson, teen scientist and inventor of an electronic sign language translator glove. Grades 4-6

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, design thinking, PBS LearningMedia, project-based-learning