Dean+Groom-+Australia

Dean Groom, Sydney, Australia Skype : dean_groom Twitter : deangroom Blog : [|deangroom.wordpress.com] Email : deangroom@gmail.com

=Project Based Learning in the Web2.0 Environment=


 * What is PBL - Well it is not problem based learning, or Inquiry based learning!**

"Project Based Learning, is about 21st Century Skills - collaboration, planning, management, communication, work ethic. We add to this 21st Century ICTs. We don't ask students for Power Points, Word Docs, Publisher Leaflets or speeches. In fact, we don't use MS Office at all. The environment the student work in has no wipeboards, no projectors and we don't talk at kids - we work with them - if they want us to or need us to. Projects run over 4/5 weeks typically in groups of 3-8 students. They blog their work 'daily' (Journals). **They use Web2.0 tools ubiquitously**.

At my school, students use the read/write web - we teach them Wikipedia, Facebook and MySpace. We have a very LOW firewall AUP. They have access to Teen Second Life, the have their own internal YouTube. They create study groups, they create wikis, they blog, they flickr, they YouTube, they Podcast. The teacher in PBL facilitates. We don't give the answers ... so students who are used to reading the book, finding the answer and remembering it for the test ... have a hard time with it - as not only have to 'know' the right answer (and there is often no single right answer), but you have to JUSTIFY it and even worse, justify it to others who might not agree with you. Sounds just like real work huh?

PBL is not Web2.0! - There are only a **small number** of schools/teachers doing both TOGETHER.


 * Most PBL schools have no clue what Web2.0 is**.

My Lens is to teach teachers about PBL and how to create awesome projects using Web2.0 tools. Teachers have to learn to stop teaching in PBL, and learn how to scaffold the process and facilitate learning - on demand.


 * PBL in a nutshell**

If I asked you to design a bridge - what is the solution? - What would you 'know' about a bridge already? what would you need to know?

PBL teaches kids (and teachers) to think about how they learn and how they solve problems. There is no one way to build a bridge, and in a well thought out PBL, you will see creativity, lateral thinking, critical literacies and lots of justification ... the facts about bridges - well they just get learned 'as they are needed'. Why learn about pontoon if you're not crossing water? Go on, have a think! - What would your 'need to know' and 'know list' be right now?


 * General Reading**


 * About PBL in the Web2.0 Environment - [|My 'Lens' on why PBL is a 'better' 21st Century Skills based approach.]
 * [|Why PBL and Web2.0] - provide make ideal companions for learning
 * [|My Web2.0/PBL]- Diigo Social Bookmarking and Forum, started for my staff - but adopted by the 'network'.
 * [|The Law of Increasing Returns] - Adoption by students is often far faster than staff can cope with.


 * Project Sample**

This is a 9th grade PBL - 5 week - Catholic Studies and Information Software Technology. We combine 2 Key Learning Areas in each project. Each project meets 8 standards and 4 school wide outcomes (21st Century Skills).

//**Entry Event - "Extract video "Growing up online (SBS)" and a request from a newspaper to produce a parent-booklet about the internet and youth.**//
In doing this project, students constantly use a 'Know and Need to Know List". They have group tasks and topics to look at, individual research tasks and in-class tests. They 'blog' their work constantly and teachers use Google Reader to monitor their activity. None of these kids had used anything more than MS Word or Publisher before - I don't use these in their environment - on their need to know list - how do I make a document - using Adobe InDesign CS3 - an example of the challenges.

This is one of 11 projects. 4 kids in the group, aged 14/15 years. Mixed ability. We don't stream as some schools do.

Notice some of the **Visual Literacies** they are using to put forward their arguments, balanced with text. We don't expect at this stage, that students are 'great writers', so we accept some degree of cut and paste - though they have to create custom images - we do not accept word art/clip art type representations. Notice too that 'Letters to the editor' - was a text produced as a result of their blogging and research during the project. We use the 'blog' as a 'tool', not always as the end product. Without the blog - they cannot justify their end product. Work Ethic - is one of our 21st Century Learning Outcomes. At this stage - we encourage comments and peer conversations with blogging - we do not 'hard' critique their work.

We do ask students to present 'soft' work - called 'critical friends' at random points in the project. At the end of the project we do not always ask all groups to present their final work - this is how the real world works. Critical Friends is a process - and probably the most important piece of the project to the student. Web2.0 allows you to do this via other schools and teachers - online - which externalizes the enemy for them. Critical Friends asks "I liked", "I wonder if", and then together the students work out 'Next Steps'. By doing this the work is constant, and not as most 'group projects' manifest in normal classrooms, as a result of a flurry of last minute activity, conducted by a few. In PBL, you cannot hide your involvement!

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Integration of Web2.0 and PBL over 2 semesters - zero to hero!



This graph shows the progress of PBL and Web2.0 over a year. It is critical in PBL to 'cap' the Web2.0 technology so that students are using a tool - by genre rather than 'brand', and applying it to 'content' and 'standards'. The aim is to use small 'wow' Web2.0 tools from time to time, embedded in a the project planning - balancing 'boredom' with 'frustration'. We are aiming to develop 'critical literacies', not 'bloggers' as such. More here


 * PBL - Promotes daily reflective writing - this is the abstract of the 'norm' expectation we have of students in their writing.**

Here is an abstract of the student handout on our expectations for 'blogging'


 * Your **career and professional growth**
 * **What you learned today**
 * The **progress of a particular project**
 * Your **progress in achieving a specific goal**
 * **Advice** you've received from other people
 * **Questions** you have about . . . anything!
 * **Comments** - who blog are your reading? can you offer a comment (like, I wonder)

Each of these topics lends itself to this one-sentence concept and building the daily habit of thinking about what you do and what is happening in various aspects of your life.

Technology is a perfect tool for supporting this process, too. You could: If these ideas are too boring for you, try getting all multimedia with it by recording a 1-sentence video that you upload to Youtube. You could even go crazy and make it a **1-minute** journal entry! Or write your one sentence, take a picture and upload to [|Flickr] where you could use the tagging feature to create a 1-sentence library. Or take a picture of something that summarizes your one-sentence and use Flickr's captions to write your sentence. The possibilities with something like this are pretty endless and within there must be something that appeals.
 * **Post your one sentence journal reflection on your blog** if you already have one. Be sure to create a tag for "one sentence journal" reflections so that you can easily look at them later.
 * **Set up a [|Tumblr microblog]** specifically for your one sentence entries. T**umblr's group capabilities mean that you could also set this up as a team blog** where each member of a team was posting his/her one-sentence reflection or idea for others to see. If you go the team route, you could also set up a wiki to gather everyone's reflections.
 * **[|Twitter] your one sentence.** It's another way to share with a group and also ensure that you keep your entries short--no more than 140 characters.
 * **Email your daily entries to yourself and store them in a special folder** where you can review them regularly--weekly, monthly, quarterly.
 * **Use it as your Facebook status update**.


 * Community Blogging** - [|Greenup2145] - Term 3 project - this is what kids can tackle by term 3 of year 1! - and what teachers have learned how to make as the project - which is just as important!

The Driving Question is a Podcast - the Entry Document is text - the work is a social blog. The end product - is a 'comment' on the official Green Party Website. To do this, students need to learn about a lot of things - as to make a comment on a global/Australian issue, with reference to example of this issue in their own postcode - then there is a lot of learning about to take place! - This is Social Studies and Geography.