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I have been cogitating on the potential of the Grade 9 Saskatchewan curriculum units for Project Based Learning. The strongest case would be using the Science “Earth and Space Science – Space Exploration” as a foundation for an interdisciplinary approach that includes the outcomes for Social Studies “Time” unit, the Math “Numbers and Operations” unit and two English Language Arts units “Looking Beyond –Imagining New Worlds and The Future” and, surprisingly, “Indigenous and Norse Narratives”. As I progress through the components of PBL, I have indicated suggested tools in brackets.

Orientation would be critical as it is unlikely that any students would have had PBL experience. This could be used to an advantage though as students would understand the responsibilities they have for pioneering a better way of learning (Discovery Education videos). Carefully consideration would be given to preparing students for the perseverance and commitment required when learning is student-centric rather than teacher-centric. The Driving Question would be a daily discussion (Bubble.us).

Grouping would follow the Jigsaw Method. Students would self-select a Home group filling in a secret ballot naming a person they would work well with and a person they would not work well with. The groups would negotiate task assignment and this would determine the Experts groups (Google Docs).

Again, as it is unlikely that students would have had experience in PBL, it would be important to provide a well defined timeline that tasks and their order were clear (xTimeline). A visible checklist would be presented daily (Google Docs). As products came in, it would be critical to provide feedback in a timely manner especially if it was part of a larger process (Jing).

Although http://pbl-online.org/ManagetheProject/projectexplore/projectexplore1.html uses the term “multitasking” for clarifying everything, the first clarification would be that multitasking is a myth. (Some people may be more efficient at task-switching but it is easily proven that switching tasks is never a time saver.) As this is an interdisciplinary approach, it would be important to clarify how the four core subjects are not distinct but each is part of the driving question (Bubbl.us).

One thing I’ve noticed missing is scaffolding for actual collaboration. Like all other skills and knowledge, the ability to collaborate cannot be an assumed. After establishing collaboration guidelines, I would then move into the arenas of time management (Google Calendar), goal orientation (Google Docs), and self-regulation (WordPress).

A flowchart would be essential to manage the workflow (SmartDraw). A flowchart would also help organize the final product itself. For example, if the students are creating a Wiki, they would need to clearly design their pages. As always, the teacher must anticipate teachable moments and capitalize on these opportunities by having training ready.

As the class would have developed their own rubrics for all products early on in the process, the teacher would have referred back to them frequently as guide posts for quality work (Rubistar). As well as formative assessment of knowledge during the project, the teacher would have prepared the students for self-assessment at the end as well as peer and teacher assessment.

Platform Reviews
Successful Project Based Learning (PBL) projects require fluency in communication, collaboration, and publishing platforms. Also known as Web 2.0, these tools engage learners, provide multiple representations of information, and give learners choice in expression. I’ve explored one tool of each of the platforms and have organized the results by using the following itemized list:

1. Overall function of the application
2. Resources available online to help new users learn to navigate the interface
3. Specific ways that students could use the application
4. Age/parental consent requirements for users
5. Caveats for teachers

Communication Platform: Tangler http://www.tangler.com/

1. Tangler is a free discussion forum tool that advertises itself as “easy” to setup, maintain, and promote. It allows real time conversations as the “post mode” by the send button can be toggled to a “chat mode”. You can add image and video as well as customizing the appearance. By default, it is public but can be made private.
2. Tangler has concise step-by-step instructions with helpful images. It also offers an “owners” forum and support section. However, I failed to discover how to delete the existing topic “Starting Your Forum”.
3. Tangler is as “easy” as it advertises itself to be. I tested it by posting text from an existing web page and it maintained the hyperlinks. Students could follow the links or discuss the embedded images and videos. Also, the chat feature would make real time interaction possible.
4. Tangler users must be over the age of 13 and agree to posted terms and conditions.
5. As users must be over the age of 13, this would be the starting point for any classroom. As you cannot upload files, if you had an image for discussion, you would have to post it elsewhere on the web first and then use the url to embed.

Collaboration Platform: Elluminate Three for Free vRoom http://elluminate.com/vroom/register.go (Am “colouring outside the lines” here as the assigned choices of collaboration tools were all asynchronous.)

1. The Elluminate Three for Free vRoom (vRoom) is advertised as a “full-featured, real-time collaboration tool for up to three people”. I would amend this to “for up to three computers” as one of more of the computers can be hooked up to a data projector so many, many people can collaborate through facilitators. This is a list of the basics available as the complete list would be too long: two-way VoIP, interactive whiteboard, application sharing, file transfer, synchronized web tour, live webcam, and breakout rooms for group work.
2. The Elluminate Training provides differentiated instruction with live online training, guides in pdf, or tutorials in video. There are also some PowerPoint presentations. Every form is multi-modal with video, audio, images and/or text. I’ve introduced other teachers and non-teachers to Elluminate and the environment is exceptionally intuitive.
3. Students can have their own vRoom for group work. Teachers can use the vRoom for office hours or larger collaboration projects. An example might be a water expert from the World Health Organization goes online with a classroom in the United States and a classroom in South Africa.
4. Elluminate has no age restrictions for signing up for a vRoom.
5. As a teacher, once you use Elluminate, you may be spoiled for anything else. After using Elluminate, I needed to do group work in a chat room and it was like being in a straight jacket.

Publishing Platform: Animoto http://animoto.com/

1. Animoto advertises itself as “the end of slideshows”.
2. Like Tangler, Animoto has a clear step-by-step process. After deciding whether you would like to create a short or long video, you add images from Animoto’s collection or an existing online album like Facebook or Flickr. Next, Animoto offers you a choice of musical genres and music. The last step is finalization. Each step provides specific guidance and explanations, for example, Animoto informs you that although you will be required to sign in to Facebook, you will automatically return to Animoto after selecting your images. The help section has questions in categories with the answer in a drop down menu.
3. Animoto would give students a fresh canvas to express their learning and easily add the important dimension of music.
4. Animoto did not indicate any age restrictions.
5. Teachers would want to show a variety of examples so that students would be aware of the end product.

Students Meeting the NETS-S
To explain how student might use the communication, collaboration, and publishing Web 2.0 applications to meet the NETS-S, I attempted to do a “show” rather than tell in Animoto. However, my effort was a failure because of the end product size. I have instead provided the images here.  The five images correspond to the NETS-S as they apply to our Water Water Everywhere PBL.

In the Learning & Leading with Technology pro and con article “Is PBL Practical?” Kevin Scott represents the “nay” side and Susan Thompson the “yea”. Neither educator denies the challenges of PBL. Scott says it is “too demanding for classroom use on a regular basis” and Thompson tellingly says “after a teacher has lived through a few PBL projects” implying that surviving the experience is a badge of honour. However demanding PBL is, I would argue vehemently with Scott’s assumption that Industrial Age methods currently employed by the majority of teachers is working. If these methods truly worked, we would not be dismayed by dropout rates and NCLB would not be needed. Scott writes:

Frustrated students are not successful and they do not leave with more knowledge. Instead, they are less motivated and crestfallen. It is not worth putting those students who are in need of our help the most out to sea without a sail. We need to focus our attention on the practices, core ideas, and strategies that work, not those that are the newest educational trend or that only work for exceptional learners.

Even with a 10% drop out rate, that means 1 in 10 learners have gone beyond frustration to hopelessness. Whether it is PBL or another method, we must practice differentiated instruction. All children start school as exceptional learners with individual learning styles. What our old methods often do is convince them that they are not capable of learning anything because we teach them as average learners with identical learning styles.

The authors of “Teacher’s Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet” have an itemized list of suggestions for preparing for a global PBL. Instead of considering the list items as challenges, I prefer to see the items as opportunities to teach the virtues. Virtues are universal and work in all cultures. We just need to make students aware of the differences in expression. On the list, manners is politeness, place is perceptiveness, cultural map is openness, high tech and low tech is consideration, and the others can also be translated into virtues. As the article states:

It is important that their global collaborations be embedded in an overarching philosophy of international education. In local to global collaborations using the Internet, the philosophy of international education is to provide action learning in real world contexts and experiences where students are given both opportunity, encouragement, mentoring….

It would be especially important to have students recognize the virtues in the other culture so everyone is seen as equal partners in the collaboration. In this way, they will see that while there may be superficial cultural differences there are profound human similarities.

Franz, K. & Midness, D. (2006). Is PBL Practical? ED Teacher’s Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet. p. 12. Retrieved on March 6, 2009 from http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/international/guide_pg12.html.
International Society for Technology in Education. Is PBL Practical? Learning & Leading with Technology. August 2007, pp. 8-9.

Our readings this week in Project Based Learning (PBL) justified its implementation by first clarifying the true mission of education. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe write in “Putting Understanding First” that:

The mission of high school is not to cover content, but rather to help learners become thoughtful about, and productive with, content. It’s not to help students get good at school, but rather to prepare them for the world beyond school—to enable them to apply what they have learned to issues and problems they will face in the future. The entire high school curriculum—course syllabi, instruction, and especially assessment—must reflect this central mission, which we call learning for understanding. (2008)

This is not just a worthy mission for high school but all educational institutions. PBL puts understanding first by recognizing key elements about the nature of learning.

According to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), brain research shows that learning is the interaction of three brain networks: the affective, recognition, and strategic networks. PBL scores high marks for stimulating all three of these, especially the affective network.  It is heartening to realize that educators are finally catching on to the fact that learning starts with engagement. No matter how effective a learner’s recognition and strategic networks are, if the learner is not engaged, no learning takes place.

Learning is the formation of new neural networks. Learners have to care enough to build these networks when they receive information that does not fit in their existing neural networks. In “The Courage to Be Constructivist” Martin Brooks and Jacqueline Brooks recognize the importance of the affective network. They discuss how important it is to understand learner motivation, challenge learner’s suppositions, and invite and honour learner opinions. The brain is a problem solving machine and engaged learners love to solve meaningful problems.

Once engaged, learners’ recognition and strategic networks interact with the affective network. Brooks and Brooks appreciate that the route through the neural networks is different for each learner; “each student still constructs his or her own unique meaning through his or her own cognitive processes.” By presenting a driving PBL question learners are engaged and will practice the skills so necessary to success in a Flat World—critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and reflection. PBL uses reflection for purposeful assessment for learning rather than purposeless assessment of learning.

With PBL learners do not have to “power down” when they come in the classroom. With the proper integration of technology, the needs of different learners can be met. At Edutopia’s “Why is PBL Important” they state

…students must use all modalities in the process of researching and solving a problem, then communicating the solutions. When children are interested in what they are doing and are able to use their areas of strength, they achieve at a higher level.

This “higher level” is what all passionate teachers want. PBL offers us a way to mentor, coach, and guide each of our learners as they reach their true potential and ideally take steps in a journey of life-long learning.

References
Rose, D.H., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2008). Put understanding first. Educational Leadership, 65(8).
Brooks, M. & Brooks J. (1999). The courage to be constructivist. Educational Leadership, 57(3).
Edutopia. Why is PBL important? Retrieved on March 16, 2009 from http://www.edutopia.org/teaching-module-pbl-why.

I have long lamented the artificial division of learning into subjects. We need to liberate learning from the time-task constraints of the Industrial Age. Too often the bell interrupts learning, or worse, wastes learning time as we await the next bell. Project Based Learning (PBL) not only integrates subjects but has tremendous potential to create critical thinkers and lifelong learners.

As part of my Wilkes University Project Based Learning Course, I watched the three exemplars of project based learning listed below. There were common circumstances and design principles. Each was based on a meaningful and complex question that engaged and required the learner to collaborate with others in critical thinking and authentic problem solving. The question was based in a subject curriculum yet the search and the expression of the solution integrated many subjects. The teachers of the PBLs designed them so well that they were able step off the stage and become guides in student-centric learning. Too often learners become disengaged and discard any assessment of learning at the end of a unit. In PBL, learners were engaged and employed feedback for true learning.

At the Distributed Learning Symposium 2009 in Calgary, I had the privilege of attending an exemplar PBL presented by teacher Amy Park entitled “Engaging ‘Screenagers’ in Academic Rigour”. Park’s shared with us her PBL process for a Grade 8 social studies outcome expressed as a short film to be submitted to an actual film festival. What impressed me about Park’s PBL was her use of learner produced rubrics. This year they created a scale of four from “powerful” to “pathetic”. Parks assured us no teen would ever want to be evaluated as pathetic so the category in and of itself was motivational. By studying examples of “voice”, learners and teacher brainstormed and developed their own rubrics. This meant when Parks was providing feedback, there was a collective understanding of each component within the rubric. This was Parks second year of entries into the film festival and like the Architect and Monarch PBLs, I imagine there is an undocumented benefit to repeating a PBL for a number of years. Although there are very transient learners there are learners who do spend years in a school. To be aware of the interest and excitement in learning generated by a PBL in an upcoming class would be inspiring. It is possible that learners set higher benchmarks each year. On the other hand, a one-time only PBL would also have its benefits as learners would see themselves as unique.

Park’s PBL can be found at http://iostudent.com/2353.

Three PBL exemplars:

1. “More Fun Than a Barrel of . . . Worms?!” at http://www.edutopia.org/more-fun-barrel-worms.
2. “Geometry Students Angle into Architecture Through Project Learning” – at http://www.edutopia.org/geometry-real-world-students-architects.
3. “March of the Monarchs: Students Follow the Butterflies’ Migration” at http://www.edutopia.org/march-monarchs.