I ran track in high school, competing in the 400m, 800m, 4x400m and the triple-jump.  I’d get incredibly nervous just before the race; butterflies smashing into the walls of my stomach threatening to make an unpleasant exit.  I felt the exact same way everyday that I taught, but not before class started, during the class.  I would look at all the material I needed to cover before the end of the year and get upset with myself when I got behind.  How was I ever going to get to that last chapter on environmental issues?  I and educators around the country marched in that first day of the school year, barely time to stretch and had a gun fired announcing the race’s start.  180 days or less, go!  The unfortunate thing is no one bothered to tell the students about the race.

When I read the NETS and especially review the student profiles, I don’t see a single mention of a time-line, a pacing-guide, or even a reference to something like “this state teacher of the year finished the curriculum in exactly 180 days”.  What I see are skills that help students develop a better understanding of a concept.  The first 4 out of the 6 NETS don’t even mention technology; the just provide the essential skills.  The construction of student authentic knowledge is what we as educators are striving to achieve and  the confines of 180 school days, a time-frame more than 100 years old, makes this task very difficult.   I believe what we are learning in this class, project based learning, is providing the framework for this construction, with the NETS providing the skills and Web2.0 the tools.

Communication and Collaboration

Synchronous

Web based tools such as Skype (voice/video/text communication), IM (text communication), Google Wave (text communication) and Webex (voice/text/video/screencast communication) provide a means for students to communicate and collaborate in real-time for free or at relatively little expense.

Asynchronous

Web based tools such as voicethread (voice/image/video/text communication, google docs (can be synchronous, text/image/video communication), wikispaces (text/image/video communication), diigo (text bookmarking communication) and twitter (text communication) provide free a means for students to collaborate and communicate, free from the confines of a 180 day, century old learning time-frame. The 40 minutes of  in-person instructionally time can disappear, with students free to access and contribute information 24 hours a day.

Publishing

Power to the people.  Web2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and twitter have provided easy world-wide publishing to anyone with access to a computer and the internet.  Add another small layer of technology, digital video and you can now have your very own television network.  Whether you choose youtube as your channel, ustream or livestream, each freely allow you to publish your video to the world.

Where can you find pleasure
Search the world for treasure
Learn science technology
Where can you begin to make your dreams all come true

- The Village People, Go West, “In the Navy”  RCA, 1979.

Growing up listening to “The Village People”, I worked at the YMCA, it’s hard to find a better soundtrack to go with the articles I’m reflecting on today.  So dig out that 45, pop in the 8-track, cue up that cassette, wipe off that CD or simply click play.  These three articles, taking place in three very different schools, on both the east and west coasts, highlight several examples of project based learning at it’s best.  Here, I will discuss what common threads have bond these examples, who did the stitching and what does the end product look like.  To start, just a coincidence here, it takes a village to raise a child.

Newport News to Bowie to Seattle, each project detailed could not have been successful if not for a community approach.  Newsome Park invited in the community to consult on and critic projects.  Mountlake Terrace involved architects, not just as one time guests, but as a true partner; providing critics and expertise to students and gaining fresh insights and design ideas that they incorporated into their designs.  These community connections were not limited to parents and local experts, all three schools utilized technology to go beyond the school walls and tap experts around the globe.  This is the case in the March of the Monarchs: Students Follow the Butterflies’ Migration example (Curtis).  Students continuously connected to scientist tracking the migration paths of the butterflies, recording and sharing their own data with the experts; producing authentic intellectual work.

Authentic work was key to the success of all three stories highlighted here, and is key to any successful project.  Each project provided students with the opportunity to complete tasks that reached beyond the school walls.  Not only connecting students to experts, but also equipping them with skills used by professionals in diverse fields.  Designing a building, presenting a proposal and defending a position are all valuable skills that the teacher incorporated into the project; skills that are not only useful in the current marketplace, but essential.  The project tasks, designed by the teachers, showcased and reflect this authentic approach.

Teachers play a different role in project based learning.  As each article articulates, project based learning is more than likely different from how you were taught.  I myself, on many occasions, am guilty of leaving out the most important group in developing the tasks within a project, the students.  That’s right, the students.  Straight from Diane Curtis’,  More Fun Than a Barrel of … Worms article, “If you find it yourself, it stays in your brain.”  The teachers in these articles worked more as consultants/facilitators rather than the traditional teacher. Many of the teachers here did something we as teachers sometimes forget to do; ask the students what they would like to learn.

When you do ask, as the teachers here did, many times the answer is something being talked about in the community.  Cystic Fibrosis.  Production of the school yearbook.  Maybe even a world wrestling company is on the stock market.  Projects were and can be built around each of these topics and guess what, you’re students are already excited about them.  That’s half the battle.  Bringing your students into the conversation changes their role in the classroom from consumer to creator.   When they complete the project and move to the next grade, their role can change again as it did for the students in Mountlake Terrace; from creator to mentor.  The students that had already completed the Schools for the Year 2050, project returned as mentors; helping freshmen with their projects.  Inviting students to participate in their own learning encourages that basic, intrinsic drive we as humans have to gain knowledge about the world around us.  We then go from simply learning for a test to, “students express gratitude to have a chance to learn these things. (Armstrong)”

What do the tests say?  That’s what the papers, the news and the administration will say, right?  Only one of the articles here point to actual numerical data.  You and I both know that knowledge is more than a number, but lets take a look anyway.   Diane Curtis in More Fun Than a Barrel of … Worms?!, points to data from the Virginia Standards of Learning test.  Huge increases are discussed.  30% gain in math.  27% gain in science.  12% gain in English.  What about today?  If this school had it figured out nearly a decade ago, wouldn’t the numbers look similar today.  See for yourself.   Take a look at the stats below.

If we assume that the administration and teachers have continued with project based learning, the evidence is clear that scores have continued to increase, well after this article was written.