wrapping up

Had Mayor Engen come in 3rd period today to listen to talks. Unfortunately, some of the posters, when projected, were less than readable. Couldn't get at some of the student directories due to the slowness of the network, otherwise we would have had at least one other powerpoint in place of a poster. The other unfortunate thing was how generally unprepared 3rd period is to present. I can see now that an authentic audience would require us to do lots of practice presenting. Also, I wonder how much editing I should be doing. Some points students make are just a bit misaligned or nearly inaccurate, and I just don't know how deeply I should make edits for them. Anyway, I can see that simplifying all the information for the purpose of public presentation is necessary. Maybe not one word per slide, but one bullet?

findings

It's all about the rhythm. Traditional science teaching is all lined up and quick-fire. Bang, bang, bang, churn out those objectives day after day. If nothing else, it makes the teacher feel productive. I wonder what the students get out of it. The pbl project, on the other hand, is much more free-form and less planned out. You have a starting point and a destination (the project goal), but the journey is so much different than the standard pedagogy. And just when I'm relaxing and getting into it, and the students seem to be ramping up a bit, it's going to be over for this year. I'm getting psyched for next quarter and planning which targets I'm going to cover, and I'm going to do the target-direct assessment I tried last year, so at least the system won't be an exact return to first semester.

synthesis

Moving into the synthesis phase today, although some groups have questions remaining. The disaster in Japan is just mind-blowing, and I think will forever etch this project into most of my students heads. It gives a sense of urgency to our efforts when you think that the same thing could happen in Seattle or Portland, minus the nukes. Visiting museum big burn exhibit tomorrow, and hope to have a speaker from MC emergency services office soon. Still not sure about a final audience, but I don't want to commit to a venue until I see how the presentations are shaping up. Maybe we should commit now, however, so they have to make it solid.

group lab concept

It's weird and difficult to let students teach my sacred cows. For instance, today groups attempted to teach faults and earthquake location, which I consider my "specialties." I just want to jump in and give my old lessons, but why? Just because I love it and have some knowledge doesn't mean they will love it, nor does it mean any of it will be absorbed or retained, or is even important. I think maybe this level is better because it lets everyone distill just the basic facts from these lessons, with the end goal not being to understand earthquakes, but to know how they might affect us here in Missoula. I guess a minimal understanding is important, but my old lesson plan was probably too deep.

How deep should we go? I just thought of creating some kind of big ven diagram poster at the beginning of each year that shows subsets of knowledge about some topic. For example: humanity, transportation, vehicles, bicycles, parts, wheels, rims, cast aluminum, metallurgy, mining. Then we would number the levels, with humanity being 1 and mining being 10. We could refer to this diagram throughout the year to describe how deeply we are delving into a particular topic, either before of after the fact. I'd say with earthquakes I would take them to level 10 several times during the unit. I think this is good for the brain, especially when math and logic and reasoning skills are involved.

It's becoming clear that a PBL unit is not about going deeply into any particular subject unless it's necessary for the outcome of the project. The outcome is paramount here, and the detailed knowledge is only a means to an end, not the end itself. Traditionally, that's backward. Knowledge is king in most high schools, and grade schools for that matter. What's king in PBL? If the outcome is a product, it can't be that important, can it? Are skills king? Skills gained by the process? What about outlook and attitude toward collaboration and learning? Citizenship.

progress

Group lab activity work went pretty well. The stream table and forest fire dynamics groups were understandably engaged. The Hawaii hotspot groups generally got through it quickly, depending on the skill level of the members (or one member). Fault model and eq location groups were pretty even in their progress, and the high/low hand twist and hurricane Juan plotting went smoothly for those groups. The plate boundary activity is less guided, however, and did require more thought, which made it slow for the less engaged groups. Not sure what I would replace that with for those groups, whose topic is preparing for disasters. The groups will teach their labs starting tomorrow. I plan on teaching one myself: the beachball lab.
What's left?
•round 2 research
•guest speakers
•jigsaw read of Big Burn
•field trip to museum at the fort
•Missoula refugee capacity investigation with Google Earth.
•final class presentation synthesis
•individual summary papers

progress

New topic came up yesterday in the Instructional Design working group (MCPS 21st Century Initiative). A woman who is a financial adviser has been discussing financial literacy, and she brought up our financial woes so it occurred to me that "financial disaster" would be a valid topic as another threat facing Missoula. Not an Earth force, per se, but a good topic for a guest speaker and good cross-curricular content.
Wrapped up all group sharing today. My impression is overall somewhat weak on facts relevant to Missoula, but this will allow good follow-up research. Also today we began group labs using various guided and structured inquiries from my files. The "preparedness" groups are doing a plate boundary activity.
Absenteeism is a definite issue for PBL. There are habitual offenders who need to be evaluated based on actual participation, and basketball players missing almost every Thursday 6th block period (which just pisses me off; what the hell are early outs supposed to cut down on???!!!). But hell, nobody cares about A's and B's, just F's. The "excused from task" in Zangle is so handy, ay? I should excuse all missing assignments from now on and see if anyone notices.

progress

A mix of computer labs and in-class computer/ipad/netbook/ipod touch use got us through the first round of research on the six topics we settled on. Today we started sharing facts, while evaluating each fact on a four point scale. Great discussions so far. It's great to see students teaching each other. Two new disasters came up today in a discussion about Yellowstone: nuclear war and asteroid impact. I would have liked to distribute the "disaster preparation" topic amongst the groups, but we could only come up with five likely disasters to hit the northwest, and we needed six topics. Perhaps next time "unlikely disasters" could be a topic, and include those two.

google docs

First try with google docs mostly successful. My two old G3 macs aren't quite up to snuff for this purpose, though. In two classes students had their own machines, and ipad, a macbook, and a netbook, and that made a lot of difference. I took 6th period to the computer lab and that worked best for them (would have been chaos without enough computers to go around). Some new ideas such as weather extremes coming up. At this point we're trying to classify topics and then set a project title and expert group topics.

progress

Engagement is going well. Great questions are being raised in all classes, and I'm finding it difficult not to answer them! These questions form the basis for our "need to know." The Yellowstone video always thrills and naturally leads to questions about the fate of Missoula in such an event. I showed the "Seattle doomsday" video Friday, and I'm alternating Katrina and Sumatra in classes today. I don't think the Nat'l. Geo. video on Katrina deals much with refugees, but I am bringing it up. A key in the Sumatra tragedy was communication, which is a big consideration for us as well. Could communication be a topic for an expert group?

Tomorrow starts a quarter of PBL

I am a bit nervous about starting the PBL unit tomorrow, mostly because it is an unknown in my teaching. But that's exciting too. For years I've done the "can humans live in the sea?" PBL every winter, but it was only about three weeks long. Now I face a whole quarter and an entirely new product: a presentation to city or county government. At least that's what I envision for the endpoint, but I think the students will surprise me with creative ideas. I've got a decent list of learning targets (here), and a core theme that I don't think can fail with my students: Is Missoula prepared for a local or regional disaster? They're all fascinated by "the end of the world in 2012," but will they take the bait and run?