Planning Management Exhibit

Jeff Robin is a great advocate for PBL. Read more here and here

Jeff talked us through his approach for a mesmorising passionate hour. A couple of things struck me. Firstly that he believes that the real content learning that the students do comes not when the students are doing their projects but when they teach each other about their projects explaining the content behind their ideas. This seems to be benefited by the cross curricular nature of it. Much of the output from the students is art based- as the man says " Engineers draw plans that only communicate with other engineers. Artist communicate" How often do I act as an engineer in teaching.

I popped into his cuurent project the students route was
1. Identify a Physics principle then create a representative picture ( they ar eso much than this he has them choose a genre etc)
2. Then show it works in the real world in a building etc so he showed them Gaudi etc
3. Then find the principle in San Diego and again represent this as a movie or painting.

Real world outcomes- a powerful driver.

It appears that nearly everything students do have a real world outcome and impact. Some of this is achieved through exhibitions known of "Presentations of learning", although the approach to this is more than a demonstration of content knowledge. It is also about the journey of how they got there incorporating the Habits of Minds and Hearts. Providing evidence of these and of the whether they are ready to move onto the next step. This seems to be key in generating ownership and encouraging high quality outcomes.

Interestingly other features that a student mentioned of improving the quality of the presentations made were regularity and struggling during the freshman year to meet the high standards expected. The attendence at public displays is extremely high too.

However there is much more I already have stumbled across a couple of examples of real world examples. A Bushmeat project, that culminated in a group of students travelling to Tanzania to teache Game Wardens how to perform DNA profile testing on bushmeat. So that they could identify the trade and consumption of endangered species. Even without the trip this is a good example of contextualising learning. The trip takes it to the stratosphere, as the beneficiaries of the student learning is actually global as it will have a direct impact on the preservation of biodiversity. Read more about it here http://www.africanbushmeat.org/

Another one is more on a local scale is a project to campaign and encourage local people to build gardens that locally sensitive to rain fall (in particular) and that encourage wildlife. Again even the context of this places the knowledge into a purposeful area, but the community aspects really adds value to this.