In the book Invent to Learn by Martinez and Stager (2013), chapter four addresses one of my burning questions when creating projects for students: What make it good? Too many times have I remembered my own schooling where I was told to research or create an experiment based on something pre-determined for me. How can I assign students to create their own question and solution to a problem that is relevant without holding their hands all the way? Thankfully, the chapter provides 8 elements of a good project, with a short summary for each element by yours truly.

8 elements of a good project:

1. Purpose and relevance – is it meaningful personally? Prompt students enough to invest time, effort and creativity into the project
2. Time – Give sufficient time to PLAN, execute, debug, change, expand and edit their project. SIAT prototyping style ideate/research, build, Test, Reflect, improve, Build again, test, launch!
3. Complexity – Combines multi discipline knowledge from each member. If connects to big ideas then even better!
4. Intensity – have a project that gets them invested as much as memorizing all Pokémon attributes, spending >100 hours on a JRPG
5. Connection – Via the web, they are connected to experts, multiple subject areas, powerful ideas and the world. Collaboration with each other like asking a question, observing a peer, or working together for a long time.
6. Access – Access to information for example, everyone needs a device? Access to resources: We have enough Lego blocks to go around? Don’t want one team to use up all resources and another team can’t move on
7. Shareability – Needs to make a project that’s share-able, be it through a showcase, blog or Youtube. It makes the project much more authentic.
8. Novelty – No need to do the same thing over and over again

(Martinez & Stager, 2013, p. 58)

 

The gist of it is that the problem must be relevant, students should feel that they are finding a solution to something that may impact theirs and other people’s lives. Once they feel they are solving something meaningful, they must be given time to be taught the skills and knowledge needed to work toward the solution. Further more TIME needs to be given for them to explore and experiment before having them present the solutions.

I have observed the time given to students in grade 5 to tinker and figure out their own solution in makerspace. The teacher gave a number of students a Raspberry Pi computer and allowed them to figure out how to connect, turn it on and do stuff with it. It took the students 2 whole weeks to get into the Graphical user interface after much Googling and plenty of trial and errors. The intensity, complexity was very high he whole time especially when they got into the OS and was rewarded with free reign of the pre-loaded apps and games already installed. It excites me to be able to comfortably let go and allow students to just explore the world around them and making meaning of it themselves.

 

More technology needs to be in classrooms for students to find solutions to their own projects, I do wonder however, where the line is drawn between busywork with technology and meaningful technology is. If the students were not successful in unlocking the potential of the Raspberry Pi, or just goofed off during research on the internet, what then? Do I go back to being the primary source of knowledge and information again as a teacher?

 

Refernce

Martinez, S. L., & Stager, G. (2013). Invent to learn: Making, tinkering, and engineering in the classroom.