Updated ACES Presentation for Spring of 21012

After a year of developing the ACES program, we will be visiting our own high school to share with the staff. This will be a great opportunity for us to clarify what it is we are doing over in our building.

All-in-all it has been a successful year. Challenging, yes. Exhausting, yes. But we really laid a good foundation for next year and, I think, proved that there is enough interest to support investing resources into growing and developing the program next year.

School Board Presentation: the ACES program

We have been very busy getting the program started this year. This is a presentation I put together for our school board to explain the ACES program. So far, things have gone really well - though, of course, there are many things we need to develop.

Adobe Youth Voices and Problem Based Learning

Adobe has a set of curricula to help teachers connect with their students through problem based learning and the use of music, print, video, and animation. The site, Adobe Youth Voices, promises to be a great resource for teachers.

In addition to fully developed curricula, the site includes teacher stories centered around lessons educators have learned through embracing this approach.  Gregg Witkin, a teacher from Boynton High School in San Jose, California wrote about the importance of cultivating a connection with students as an essential element to becoming an effecting teacher.  This really jibes with the direction we have been trying to take with our high school students in the ACES program.

Over the past several weeks we have, unfortunately, had our attention drawn away from moving forward with developing a problem/project based approach to learning.  Essential administrative tasks swallowed up a lot of our time.  Now, I am hoping we are going to be able to start developing the problem/project based aspect of the program.

We are using a product - a Photo Story 3 slide show - as a means of allowing my Government students to display their understanding of the Bill of Rights.  This also gave me a chance to introduce dig.ccmixter.com as a site for downloadable music they can import into their slide show if they wish.  Students also learned how to create music within the free Photo Story 3 application.  One result of my experience in the Full Sail EMDT masters program has been an increased commitment to honoring the intellectual property of others - and to teaching my students to do the same.

This week I intend, finally, to get them journaling, by way of their blogs.  I will have to accelerate the rest of our course somewhat because of the things that hindered us at the start of the year.  However, I also discovered Blackboard offers a free version of their application online!  I started building an online version of my Government course using their Course Sites.  I was glad to find this, because Blackboard is so widely used, but I had only been able to use Moodle and Schoology up to this point.

At this point I need to make a couple of media assets - tutorials - to help my students through their Photo Story projects.  Then it is the downhill rush to the Christmas break!  Well, they say that a car has to be moving before you can steer it - so I'd say things are good.  We are certainly moving!  Now let's see if we can steer things in the right direction.

Well, that was bracing!

Many of the sources that describe using Project Based Learning (PBL) also testify to the fact that implementing it (or any approach that is radically different from traditional methods) can take us out of our comfort zone.
Putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions is hard to do. I think it is even more challenging in the absence of a mentor who has traveled the path before you. Still, I believe our journey to blend PBL with the other approaches used in our program is well worthwhile.
We got our program underway last week and presented the concept of PBL to our students; however, we are just laying the groundwork. We have not actually engaged in PBL yet. Our first task is to create a foundation - to make sure students have basic skills needed to carry out projects of their own. Their first projects will be guided and supported. As students (and the teachers) progress, the students will initiate their own projects.
One "bump in the road" was the decision by the district to transfer our math/science teacher to the high school, leaving our program without a qualified math or science teacher. Ouch! It also left a program with a very small staff to begin with diminished by one third. Double ouch! Oh, yes, and this happened during the first week of school. Yikes! We knew our friend was going to be part-time at the high school, but having him totally gone was a shock.
I have no doubt we will still press forward and successfully implement PBL in our program. We have great leadership in a director and district superintendent who are vested in seeing our program succeed. It will be quite a challenge, though. I look forward to looking back at the end of the year with the satisfaction of those who have worked hard to overcome obstacles and achieved a worthwhile goal.

PBL Ground Zero

Be still my constructivist heart! Seriously, there is such cool stuff out there about project-based or expeditionary learning. I also discovered a company called Project Foundry, which offers an LMS that helps teachers take students through a project-based approach, tying the planned project to standards, and assisting teachers to manage the whole process, including the awarding of credit.

What I am doing now is looking for a way to present this to our "alternative" high school students. In one video, the classrooms were like offices, with low dividers and work stations for kids that looked an awful lot like an office. The adult leading the kids was called an "advisor" rather than a "teacher." This may seem like a petty shift in semantics, but when students have built up a paradigm for what they think a "teacher" is, they can be helpful in moving students away from that mold.

Our journey to being a truly project-based/problem-based school is just beginning. Our first steps might still be a little like a traditional classroom. As the year progresses, I expect our team to learn more about how to be advisors. We'll be shifting our paradigm right along with the students. Cool.

See More Myst IV Revelation Various at IGN.com

Why a picture from Myst IV Revelation? We are starting the year with a focus on relationships. As part of that, we are having students decorate their lockers as a way of telling others about themselves. The logical parallel to this is for each of the teachers to decorate their doors with the same intent. So, I have been on a search for images to help inspire my door design.

Mrs. Reed's door is a big sunshine, green grass, blue water and sky. I laughed and told her I would decorate my door (which is directly across the hall) in Goth style and we could see which door attracts which kids. Just kidding. Actually, I am going to go for steampunk on my door, maybe with the addition of a dragon or two.

Building a friendly yet professional relationship has got to be a foundation for our whole year, and the doors and lockers are intended to function as a springboard for getting to know one another a little better. It is also fun. Setting the right emotional tone is important too!

I will update this post with pictures of our doors once we are all done decorating them next week.

Seek and ye shall find

Reaching the iGeneration requires a shift in teacher thinking!

Amazing site!  If you are interested in using project based learning effectively, but have little or no experience with PBL, you need to check out Project Based Learning online. This site has an excellent set of resources to help teachers plan their PBL units.  There are also videos with great examples of schools using PBL effectively.

Maybe I've been around too long, but  when I read statements about things that can go wrong, I get it. Been there, done that! I definitely know about things going wrong!

I also know first-hand how much more time and effort goes into constructing really effective PBL than is needed for a more traditional approach.  Our team is well aware that we will be putting in many, many extra hours this year.  Sites like the Project Based Learning are so valuable in helping us to think about all of the details of planning and carrying off this approach successfully.  Not only do I find myself nodding in agreement as I read their web site, but I also can tell that these people get it - they know what they are talking about.

The planning process the PBL-online site describes echoes instructional design principles I learned in the Education Media Design Technology masters program through Full Sail University.  The site also offers an opportunity for collaboration, as teachers can share their own PBL plans and outcomes with other educators.

Like anything else, PBL can be implemented well or poorly.  The research I've been reading, including articles posted on the BIE site, confirm again the value of learning to effectively use PBL with our high school students.  But there is the caveat - effectively implement - that makes a great deal of difference between having the ideal outcomes PBL is capable of, and creating a big project with no particular positive impact on learning.

I think most people who've been in education for a few years have seen the monster improperly designed attempts at PBL can create.  That is why I keep going back and looking again at resources and research to help guide my practice.  It helps keep me on the right track.  The many videos and reports of success also are very encouraging.  They let me know that, if our team keeps working on using PBL, we will refine and improve our use of this approach with the effect of creating a dynamic, engaging learning environment for our students.