Share your thoughts about New Tech High and Problem Based Learning.
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These are the “notes” that were taken during the tech coach meeting.
• Went to Napa and Sacramento.
• Project based learning. Two different sites with wide difference of SES.
• Students greatly involved in project based learning
• Huge community buy in. Community visitors, real world experiences.
• Student created group, student created-contract express responsibilities for each student.
• Public and magnet school. Application to attend schools.
• 400 students in each high school. 100 students at each grade level. Equal number of males and females.
• Each students has a laptop.
• All grades online almost instantaneous. grades broken down into 7 different areas such as 21st century skills, group work, timeliness, communication, etc.
• Grades more meaningful to students than just letter based grades.
• Napa 8 years old, Sacramento. 3 years old.
• Building passions and interests into their everyday projects.
• Students taking ownership within administrative issues, such as stealing.
• Teachers were tech savvy. Believe in project based learning. Lots of turn over during the beginning.
• Created a library of project based learning activities to share.
• Needed support from community to build lessons.
• New Tech High is a foundation?
• Ironwood beginning a pilot of 90-95 students using project based learning. More information to come as pilot is conducted.
• Need to have teachers willing to work together.
• 21st century learning is about kids learning to collaborate, communicate, find the information, real world applications. Project based learning fits this.
• Student engagement higher, learning more.
I’m quite excited by the possibilities being explored at these New Tech High Schools. I can see how planning these projects would be a lot of up-front work, but that they would be so valuable for our students. I would like to try my hand at planning at least one small project like this for the coming year. I’m not really sure how to begin, but I think that this way of learning and teaching is the way that we need to go for the future. I am concerned about getting teachers to see that this is really a great way for students to get the skills that they need to be successful. I fear that some teachers are not willing to try new things or trust that the students will really learn from these projects. I know that I would need at least several years to completely revamp my units to make them completely problem-based. I do hope that this is way education is going, and that in the next five years, schools like this will no longer be considered “revolutionary.”
The New Tech High experience was AMAZING. What amazed me most was not so much the technology (though that was wonderful), but the relationships that drove the entire process. The small school environment allowed very strong relationships to develop between staff & student AND student & student. The strong community there really allowed for the PBJ (project based learning) to take off. There was incredibly buy in from all the staff and all the students. EVERY teacher and EVERY student participated in PBL.
Please visit the above sites to get a better idea about the New Tech model.
Lastly, I do want to reiterate about what we are doing at IRHS – this is NOT a pbl pilot. It is a core team pilot. While I am sure we will be exploring some PBL, that is not the primary focus this year. The primary focus this year will be developing the communication between the three core teachers, developing the communication between the core group and the students, and lastly increasing communication with parents of the core team students. After we have a foundation setup we will be exploring more PBL. We still have share and discuss curriculum etc. With all that being said, I am a HUGE fan of PBL and I have been doing a lot more of it in my classroom this year. The kids absolutely LOVE it – though it is a lot more work on all of our ends. I strongly feel that the students learn a lot more from the projects.
The best project I did this year was on the effects of smoking. The students did amazing PSAs and I feel they really learned a lot from them. I have put a few of the PSAs on my website:
The PSAs shown there come from A honors students all the way to D level general biology students. As you can see they are all amazing! My students really impressed me with this one. Unlike traditional projects, this one falls more under the PBL model, in so far as there is a real world application here – to educate the public. It was (and still is my intention) to broadcast these to the school population. This way the student work is not just graded and thrown out, or put into a binder… but it makes a difference. Knowing this really helps the students to put forth greater effort and passion in their work.
Project based learning has been researched and is proven as a positive learning style. I am excited to hear the we are beginning to see its importance in learning. I am more excited that our schools are piloting the program. This will allow for total differentiating and every student will be able to “show” what they are learning. Change is hard for everyone, but this will be a positive adventure and I am sure other teachers and schools will soon follow.
Robert Walling said
These are the “notes” that were taken during the tech coach meeting.
• Went to Napa and Sacramento.
• Project based learning. Two different sites with wide difference of SES.
• Students greatly involved in project based learning
• Huge community buy in. Community visitors, real world experiences.
• Student created group, student created-contract express responsibilities for each student.
• Public and magnet school. Application to attend schools.
• 400 students in each high school. 100 students at each grade level. Equal number of males and females.
• Each students has a laptop.
• All grades online almost instantaneous. grades broken down into 7 different areas such as 21st century skills, group work, timeliness, communication, etc.
• Grades more meaningful to students than just letter based grades.
• Napa 8 years old, Sacramento. 3 years old.
• Building passions and interests into their everyday projects.
• Students taking ownership within administrative issues, such as stealing.
• Teachers were tech savvy. Believe in project based learning. Lots of turn over during the beginning.
• Created a library of project based learning activities to share.
• Needed support from community to build lessons.
• New Tech High is a foundation?
• Ironwood beginning a pilot of 90-95 students using project based learning. More information to come as pilot is conducted.
• Need to have teachers willing to work together.
• 21st century learning is about kids learning to collaborate, communicate, find the information, real world applications. Project based learning fits this.
• Student engagement higher, learning more.
Liesl Scheffel said
I’m quite excited by the possibilities being explored at these New Tech High Schools. I can see how planning these projects would be a lot of up-front work, but that they would be so valuable for our students. I would like to try my hand at planning at least one small project like this for the coming year. I’m not really sure how to begin, but I think that this way of learning and teaching is the way that we need to go for the future. I am concerned about getting teachers to see that this is really a great way for students to get the skills that they need to be successful. I fear that some teachers are not willing to try new things or trust that the students will really learn from these projects. I know that I would need at least several years to completely revamp my units to make them completely problem-based. I do hope that this is way education is going, and that in the next five years, schools like this will no longer be considered “revolutionary.”
crobson said
The New Tech High experience was AMAZING. What amazed me most was not so much the technology (though that was wonderful), but the relationships that drove the entire process. The small school environment allowed very strong relationships to develop between staff & student AND student & student. The strong community there really allowed for the PBJ (project based learning) to take off. There was incredibly buy in from all the staff and all the students. EVERY teacher and EVERY student participated in PBL.
Here is the link for the New Tech Foundation:
http://www.newtechfoundation.org/
Here are two links for the schools we visited:
1. Napa: http://www.newtechhigh.org
2. Sacramento: http://schools.scusd.edu/SacNewTech/
Please visit the above sites to get a better idea about the New Tech model.
Lastly, I do want to reiterate about what we are doing at IRHS – this is NOT a pbl pilot. It is a core team pilot. While I am sure we will be exploring some PBL, that is not the primary focus this year. The primary focus this year will be developing the communication between the three core teachers, developing the communication between the core group and the students, and lastly increasing communication with parents of the core team students. After we have a foundation setup we will be exploring more PBL. We still have share and discuss curriculum etc. With all that being said, I am a HUGE fan of PBL and I have been doing a lot more of it in my classroom this year. The kids absolutely LOVE it – though it is a lot more work on all of our ends. I strongly feel that the students learn a lot more from the projects.
The best project I did this year was on the effects of smoking. The students did amazing PSAs and I feel they really learned a lot from them. I have put a few of the PSAs on my website:
http://www.amphi.com/teachers/crobson/smoking_PSA.html
The PSAs shown there come from A honors students all the way to D level general biology students. As you can see they are all amazing! My students really impressed me with this one. Unlike traditional projects, this one falls more under the PBL model, in so far as there is a real world application here – to educate the public. It was (and still is my intention) to broadcast these to the school population. This way the student work is not just graded and thrown out, or put into a binder… but it makes a difference. Knowing this really helps the students to put forth greater effort and passion in their work.
Jan said
Project based learning has been researched and is proven as a positive learning style. I am excited to hear the we are beginning to see its importance in learning. I am more excited that our schools are piloting the program. This will allow for total differentiating and every student will be able to “show” what they are learning. Change is hard for everyone, but this will be a positive adventure and I am sure other teachers and schools will soon follow.