Presentations

Our groups presented their projects to their teacher advisor on June 7.  I had the opportunity to watch 4 groups since one of the teachers was sick.  I was pleasantly surprised with what the kids came up with.  The groups I observed had created a product, and a slide show to go with it.  What I was not expecting was the presentation skills that I witnessed.  Most of the students, if not all, were simply reading the slides or notes off of papers.  They had spent so much time doing the project part that they were not really prepared for the presentation itself.  Another thing we did on this day was a self and peer evaluation of all of the group members.  Many students were very kind to group members that the teachers knew had contributed very little to the entire project.  One student even left the class and didn't return on the presentation day and the other student still gave her level 3 and 4 marks on her peer evaluation even though it meant that she did the presentation by herself!!  According to the other teachers involved in the project, the presentations themselves were not impressive.  There were also some groups that actually had nothing to present, so again the question of what do we do with that?  Teachers did evaluate the projects that they saw, and will give those marks to the "home" teacher for those students.  It will be up to each individual teacher to decide how they will use those marks.  Each teacher has already communicated the value of this project to their students.  Next step is to create an exit survey and find out what the kids thought of the whole process.

High Tech High

What an incredible opportunity and experience for this week.  I am in San Diego for a tour and workshops at High Tech High.  Now hearing the name probably puts a particular image in your head, but get that out of there right away.  High Tech High is not all about technology!  It's not about hardware, software, apps etc.  it's about a different way of thinking about kids and learning.  Credits are earned at High Tech High through Project Based Learning.  When you look at certain Ontario Ministry documents (i.e. co-op), what they are doing is old news, but it's one of those things that "everyone talks about but no one is doing".  This school is doing it from kindergarten to Grade 12.  Now there were some "ya, but" moments, but nothing that makes this a BHAG for us to implement at least some of the components at our school, in our new space (or even in the regular classroom).  A lot of what the kids were doing here, we envisioned our kids doing in our own Project.  The way we designed our project, is the same way they design many of their projects, with some notable differences.  At this point at High Tech High students work together with students in the same Grade only, and they are working toward the same final product with specific parameters in place.  Before the project starts, the teacher and students discuss the project and will make changes if the class agrees that they would like to change things.  Our project had students from Grades 10-12 and their final product was really up to them.
   One thing that struck me when walking around the schools, was that every wall space had a display of student projects and when we went into classrooms and asked kids questions, all of them (no matter the grade level) could tell me what they were doing and why they were doing it.  Our HTH contact for the week was Law and he took us through some workshops around project design as well as how the teachers there assess the projects.  There are too many takeaways to try and portray in a blog, but here are links to my Google Photos albums of my two days in the schools.

Day 1

Day 2