youth enrichment and empowerment. Its main components – new media literacy and digital citizenship – are both protective and enabling.

They share some interesting findings from the Internet Safety Technical Taskforce which wrapped up in January 2009, including that:

cyberbullying and harassment are the most salient risks youth face, all children aren’t equally at risk, and children’s psychosocial makeup and environment are better predictors of risk than the technology they use.

This may seem obvious to many, but to me it was an eye opener.  Our tendency to focus on the technology (Facebook, MySpace, IM etc) that allows peer-to-peer interactions online has a tendency to make us look at the problem as a ‘one size fits all’ one (students are misusing Facebook, so lets block it in school), when in fact problematic online behaviours are really just problematic behaviours that happen to take place online.  Instead of talking about the technology we should be talking about the behaviours, and the underlying reasons for them; just as we do with real world behaviours.

This gets me thinking about how to get my students to critically think about their online lives and behaviours in a meaningful way.  Often I feel like our conversations are about 2-d solutions to 3-d problems.  My students already know about the 2-d solutions, so much so that they have become buzzwords.  The word “cyberbullying” has become a buzzword and I don’t feel I done a very good job unpacking it with my students.  When I used to be an outdoor educator we had other buzzwords that were equally frustrating, words like “team work” and “communication”.  My students all knew that these words were important and what we were trying to teach them, so they were quick to use them during debriefs.  The really powerful learning came when they were forced to unpack what these words meant in a specific context, or even better when they were put into a situation that really challenged their ability to work as a team and communicate and forced them to re-examine their preconceived notions of what these concepts really meant.  I can’t help feeling like I’m dealing with the same dynamic when it comes to the words “internet safety” and “cyberbullying”.  These have become buzzwords in my students lives and they know enough about them to feel like there is nothing else to really discuss, when in fact there is lots.

This is the second year that my Grade 9 students have participated in the Digiteen Project.  As part of this project they spend some time researching the 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship before deciding on an Action Project to undertake at our school.  This has been a challenging project for me and I am still struggling to figure out why it hasn’t had the impact on my students that I thought it would.  What I am coming to realise is that quite a few of them come into my class feeling like they already know about Internet Safety and they don’t really see how Digital Citizenship is relevant to them.  I wonder if this is because they have spent years having adults talk down to them about these issues, instead of involving them in the discussion.  They say this really well in the article:

And young people themselves need to be part of the discussion, not just to listen and parrot what adults tell them to say, but to help think through the issues, help adults understand the difference between real and imagined dangers, how youth themselves are dealing with the real ones (research shows a good deal of intelligence on their part), and help adults come up with messages that will resonate with their peers.

So the question then is how do I get my students to take this conversation seriously enough to think critically about it and not just fall back on the buzzwords.  One of the models in this article gives me hope, it’s called the ‘Net Effect” and it’s based on a group of characteristics packaged by social media researcher danah boyd that really capture why what we do online is different than what we do face to face:

* Persistence & searchability: the Net as a permanent, searchable archive
* Replicability: the ability to copy and paste from anywhere on the Net, to anywhere online
* Scalability: high potential visibility well beyond the audience you had in mind
* Invisible audiences: never really knowing who’s seeing, reading or watching what you post
* Blurring of public and private: an extension of invisible audiences because boundaries aren’t clear – private from whom?

These seem like very tangible, personal topics to me and possibly just the framework for exploring issues of Digital Citizenship with my students in a way that will get them more involved.

I also keep coming back to this blog post by ben blumsmith on teaching Mathematics.  In it he talks about giving students a problem with an superficial pattern that seems to explain things, but actually doesn’t.  The argument being that the cognitive dissonance that arises when they realise their pre-conceived notions don’t work is enough to get them to delve deeper.  This has got me thinking whether I can come up with some good scenarios (maybe videos, maybe stories) that will challenge my students pre-concieved notions regarding Digital Citizenship and get them to delve deeper?

Powered by ScribeFire.

It’s interesting to reflect on how the nature of my participation in Social Media has changed.  At first it was all about the blog, and now it’s more about Twitter and Nings.  But  I miss my blog.  It’s the place that makes me slow down and be accountable for what I am thinking and saying.  In contrast I am more inclined to lob something half baked out into the Twittersphere to see what will happen; I own it less.  However (now that I am thinking about it) since I am braver on Twitter it is also the space that has encouraged me to seek out people that challenge me.  This twitter post for example:

As someone who has been guilty of spreading the “factory model” meme I considered this one worthy of a retweet because right or wrong it made me take a step back and examine my own thinking.

Through Twitter I also recently found a Globe and Mail article called Information Rich and Attention Poor in which they argue  that since data and information today are in abundance the scarce commodity is time and attention, and a growing consequence of this shift is an increasing emphasis on speed at the expense of depth.  In other word there are so many things we could be doing it is hard to justify focusing on one thing.  Like blogging … when I could be tweeting instead.

The article also has this great quote about the production of knowledge:

We may think metaphorically of the production of knowledge as a function of “information” and “attention,” with attention understood as the set of activities by which information is ultimately transformed into various forms of knowledge.

So if attention is one the wane, how do we turn information into knowledge?  Maybe I am missing something here.  I know that there is a lot of power in the collective intelligence of the masses, but what this article seems to imply (and which I might be inclined to agree with – if I wasn’t such a fence sitter) is that this collective intelligence can cover a lot of ground, but not dig into it very deep.

The article goes in to discuss the decline of the “expert”.

But while hundreds of thousands of Web-empowered volunteers are able to very efficiently dedicate small slices of their discretionary time, the traditional experts – professors, journalists, authors and filmmakers – need to be compensated for their effort, since expertise is what they have to sell. Unfortunately for them, this has become a much harder sell because the ethic of “free” rules the economics of so much Web content.

The irony of all this is that most of the knowledge that “the crowd’ uses and remixes originally came from experts.

The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital. This suggests that today’s “cult of the amateur” will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.

For someone like me who is usually so immersed in the ra-ra world of web 2.0 this perspective on information and attention was a refreshing change and like the tweet that I started this post with, it made me revisit some of my assumptions.  Which I hope, in the end, will keep me honest.

21st Century Pedagogy by Marco Torres

21st century schools with Stephen Heppell

Some great presentation zen style slideshows by Kim Cofino.

The 21st Century Learner

The 21st Century Educator

I am a little more skeptical though.  Over the past 2000 years, ‘classical education’ (is there such a thing?) has delivered the greatest minds known to us; the scientists, the poets, the musicians, the architects, engineers, linguists and, above all, the philosophers.

I`m not convinced that the Industrial model of education that we have today IS the type of education that has existed over the past 2000 years.  It has been argued that our current system emerged as a way to mass educate students to participate in an industrial society.  Before that education consisted of more of an apprenticeship model.  This learning happened in a social context that gave the content real world relevance.  I`m not an expert on what it was like to be an apprentice but I would guess that it involved a lot of conversation and working through problems with other people you trust and respect.  I think that the power of these new internet tools and Personal Learning Networks is that they can allow us and our students to go out and find mentors andpeople we trust and learn with and from them.  Sort of like a high tech apprenticeship-mentoring model.

Your comment makes me think of Einstein, who we hold up as one of the greatest minds of our time.  He did not do well in our `Classical`schooling system and for most of his professional career worked through his ideas and thoughts in letters to colleagues.  Think what he could have accomplished if he had had a blog

I fear is that we lack the rigour that produced the great Renaissance men; that technology is raising very clever young people, but also ones that lack the discipline, work ethic and insight to change the world we have created.

I share your concern that because project based learning and social learning is more complex and dynamic than more traditional classroom learning there is a danger of students being distracted and not learning about rigour.  But if you start with the premise that PBL and social learning is real learning then I think our challenge is to introduce rigour into the process, not be put off by the fact that it is difficult to do.  I see the MYP design cycle as being a useful way to start doing this.

Maybe there is a balance between these two polar views?

I think this is the key.  In my experience in order for students to really engage in higher level explorations they first need to be taught the content and skills to build on.  There will always be a place for direct instruction, but I don`t think we should just automatically default to this way of teaching.  After reading Disrupting Class this year I have started using an online math program twice a week to give my students more autonomy in how they learn math in my class.  I am still doing some direct instruction for the students that need it and I am doing regular checks for understanding, but I am really impressed with how many of my students are able to figure things out for themselves using the tools I have made available to them.

Image by smiling_da_vinci on Flickr

Will Richardson recently wrote

the real power of the Read/Write is not the ability to publish but the ability to connect.

This really resonated with me and I think provides a key to unlocking really powerful Professional Development opportunities.  I’ll try and explain my thinking below.

I need to start with my own experiences.  After a few years as a lurker, this year I have stared to participate more actively in the social web.  I have started to blog, I have involved my students in a global collaborative project, I have participated in Ning discussions, and I have tried to comment and not just read blog posts.  Recently I am starting to realise the power of Twitter.  I knew about all these tools a year ago, but it wasn’t until I started to use them personally that I began to understand just how powerful networked learning is.  My network is small, but through the process of sharing my thoughts and experiences (both good and bad) I have started to make contacts with like-minded teachers throughout the world.  This fledgling network has not only taught me a lot, but it has also supported me as I struggle with ideas and different ways of teaching.

I have learned a lot from my network and been more inspired than I have ever been in more formal professional development situations.  Not that face-to-face interactions aren’t important, but when the interactions at a face-to-face event are restricted to the faces in the room the potential is restricted.  If instead each of the individuals involved is connected to a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and they all bring that network with them to the face-to-face meetings, the connections and potential increase exponentially.

In my opinion effective 21st century professional development needs to start with the Networked Learning piece.  All participants in the event need to be supported as they learn how to build an effective PLN.  The question is, what would this look like?  Well, in my opinion there would be blogs; there would be commenting on blogs; there would be RSS and aggregators involved so that the power of pulling information can be realised; there would be social bookmarking and folksonomies; and maybe there would be VoIP?  The key would be to set all of this up so that real connections are made and that the platform used is flexible enough that it can beused far into the future.

One obvious platform for supporting networked pro-d is Ning.  I think that a Ning in principle is a great idea in that it combines a lot of the key ingredients in one central platform.  Participants can blog and tag their posts, participate in forums and grab RSS feeds from differet kinds of content.  The danger of creating a new Ning to support a particular event is that the Ningwill never gather enough momentum to sustain itself.  There are a lot of Nings out there gathering dust because they never managed to get all the ingredients right.  Blogging on a Ning is also a little problematic in that then then the Blog is always attached to the Ning and doesn’t necessarily become something individual that represents each particular teacher.  As such the danger is that the blog will only remain active as long as the pro-d does.

So what are some alternative platforms?  I like the Ning platform but I wonder whether there is a need to create a new Ning when there are so many good ones out there already.  If a goal of the pro-d is to help teachers start to create a PLN then wouldn’t it be more effective to start a group within an already established network like the Classroom 2.0 Ning?  I also think that the more you an customise the online space from which you share and network the more likey you are to stick with it.  The Ning blogs are for the most part quite generic.  I think that there would be a greater chance of participants continuing to blog if they atart with a platform like Edublogs or Blogger that allows for much more customisation.

What about the tools?  I am a believer in just in time and inquiry learning, but in my own experience there is also a place for direct instruction to provide a baseon which further explorations can build.  I believe that in order for teachers to start building a PLN they first need to understand the fundamentals of: how a blogging platform works; RSS and how to populate a feed reader with relevant and engaging information; tagging and folksonomies and how these have changed the way information is organised.  I believe that these topics need to be taught directly because they are fundamental to creating and sustaining an effective PLN.

What about lesson plans, teaching and curriculum?  In theory once participants at a pro-d session have started to build their PLNs they will have access to a wide range of lesson plans that iincorporate web 2.0 tools and will be able to read reflections on how those lessons went.  They will be able to read reflections by teachers trying to implement the kind of curriculum that rally leverages the power of technology.  They will be able to look for links between the experiences of other teachers and their own teaching practices. And they will be able to engage in deeper and more meaningful face-to-face interactions because they will be drawing on the experiences of their network.

What about the keynote speaker?  I think that their role is to share inspiring examples and stories that illustrate the power of Networked Learning.  They should also inspire good questions.  participants should emerge from the keynote understanding the importance of life long learning and be excited to start tackling the hard questions with the help of their PLNs.

Am I crazy?  Is this too hard to facilitate?  I don’t know.  But I do know that professional development that does not help teachers leverage the power of the internet by building robust Personal Learning Networks runs the risk of only having a short term impact, not a life long one.

Network Diagram by Sue Waters

You have to give them roots before you give them wings.

This got me thinking about something else Monke mentioned in his article about how he felt when he taught his students about the internet.

I was about to give my high school students more power to do more harm to more people than any teens had ever had in history, and all at a safe distance.  They could inflict emotional pain with a few keystrokes and never have to witness the tears shed.  They could destroy hours of work accomplished by others not because of ill-will, but simply because the files of these poorly protected network users provided convenient bullseyes for youth flexing their new found muscles.

This may be a little overstated but I think there is some truth in this.  I am a real believer that in today`s global society it is very important that I as a middle and high school teacher use web 2.0 social networking tools to extend my students reach further than our small school on Vancouver Island.  But I`m not sure I believe this is true for elementary school children.   In fact I`m pretty sure that exposing children to social networking tools at a young age in NOT the best way to educate good digital citizens.  They need lots of exposure to lots of tangible experiences that help them become good citizens first, before we add the “digital” part.

I`m starting to wonder whether there might not be an interesting case to be made for an elementary curriculum designed to give our students ROOTS that dovetails into an middle and high school curriculum that gives them social networking WINGS.  The roots would be lots of non-virtual things like a sense of place; a connection with nature; social skills; group work skills; conflict resolution skills.  I know that all these things that are already done in elementary schools but in order to prepare students for a world in which they will need to apply these skills in a virtual setting I think that the roots become even more important so that they have a foundation for when they get older and are given their wings.

Aside #1: I am a big fan of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT.  Their mission in to extend the kindergarten style of learning so that learners of all ages can learn through designing, creating, experimenting and exploring.  They suggest that we have slowly done away with this kind of learning in order to get kids ready to take tests at earlier and earlier ages.  I wonder if we might be in danger of doing this same thing with technology.  As we start to use it more and more in the older grades the temptation is to say `Well, if we can just get them doing this with technology at an earlier grade then just think what they will be able to do when they get to high school.`  But their are lots of skills they need to be good digital citizens that can`t (or shouldn’t) be taught using a computer.

Aside #2: After writing this post I was directed to this interesting article from Zone’n Workshops.  It’s definitely a fairly alarmist article, but there was one part that I think is worth reproducing:

Each individual would benefit from discovering their “just right” level
of technology to promote academic and workplace achievements, but also
understand how to balance this technology with activities that promote
physical and mental health.  Children obviously need help with managing
this difficult task.  Achieving this balance will promote optimal brain
efficiency, while maintaining a place on the world stage as leaders in
advanced technology.

I think this is our role as educators in the 21st century.  To figure out what the “just right” level of technology is at all age levels and help our students develop the discipline to use technology and not be used by it.

Preparation does not necessarily warrant early participation….quite often preparation involves strengthening inner resources – self-discipline, emotional control, moral judgement, empathy etc. – before the opportunities to participate arise.

Seems to me we should be thinking carefully about this in the context of teaching about and using social networks in the classroom, especially in elementary schools.  As much as I do believe that children can develop valuable social skills in an online social networking situation it makes sense to me that first there needs to be a solid foundation of skills based on face to face interactions.

Good preparation for working in this highly abstract, symbolic environment was not lots of computer practice, but an immersion in firsthand experiences and relationships that would give depth and meaning to the knowledge students had to depict and interpret on the screen.

He quotes a 2004 study from the University of Munich that showed that the more students had access to computers in school and at home, the lower their overall scores on PISA interanational tests (not sure what these are).  Similar results were found in a recent study by the Children`s Digital Media Center.  To me this reinforces how important it is that the way technology is used in the classroom has a sound pedagogical basis.  If it is just used as a way to replace face to face interactions (which is a very tempting option that I am guilty of sometimes) then it is no surprise that the results are less than impressive.  I wonder how many of the schools in these studies had invested time in teacher training and careful lesson design, or were they all just jumping on the technology bandwagon.

If the 20th century taught us anything at all, it should have been that technology is a very mixed blessing.  Children entering elementary schools today will have to wrestle with the mess we leave them because of our own lack of technological wisdom: global warming, increasingly lethal weapons …. addiction to automobiles, overuse of pesticides and antibiotics …

This one really made me think.  I am a die hard advocate to technology in schools and can see so much potential if technology is used in an appropriate pedagogical environment.  But I wonder whether we are capable of looking into the future honestly and identifying the long term impact our increasing reliance on technology is going to have on things like social relationships and health.

So this all leaves me wondering whether the ideal Elementary Curriculum for preparing students for a Technologically rich middle and high school experience should actually be technology free.  Monke suggests that the following activities should be essential experiences in the lower grades:

• Close, loving relationships with responsible adults
• Outdoor activity, nature exploration, gardening etc
• Time for unstructured play
• Music, drama, puppetry, dance, painting and other arts
• Hands on lessons, handcrafts ….
• Conversation, poetry, storytelling, and books read alound with beloved adults.

Photo by Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha on Flickr

Being involved in the Digiteen project gave me insight into what classroom 2.0 looks like.  I could not have gotten this insight without being involved in the nitty gritty of this project and finding solutions to the frustrations and stresses that emerged.  The Digiteen project forced me to stop being a passive consumer of content and to start participating in the conversation and that has been a powerful shift not only in what I am learning but in how I am learning.  As David Warlick recently wrote:

Retooling our classrooms into rich and dynamic learning environments will not be something that you can learn how to do in a workshop.  It’s something that will happen through continued creativity, conversations, sharing, experimenting, reporting, and more conversations.

In my opinion taking the plunge and participating in a Global Collaborative Project is one of the best ways I can think of to truly understand the way that web 2.0 tools are transforming the learning opportunities available to us and our students.  In this post my goal is to give ‘legs’ to this assertion by describing the different opportunities and transformative moments that occured for me during the Digiteen project.

Getting Started

My participation in this project started when I registered with the Flat Classroom Ning.  I had recently read Thomas Friedman’s book and was interested in seeing what this project was all about.  Almost immediately I received a message from Julie Lindsay asking if I was interested in the Digiteen project.  I couldn’t believe it.  I was getting a message from someone that was profiled in The World is Flat!  Of course I jumped at the chance.  I didn’t hear from Julie for a little while about the project and one day I was playing around with Twitter (which I really didn’t understand) and I noticed that I could direct message Vicki Davis, the co-founder of the Digiteen project, so I did.  And she answered almost immediately wondering whether I was interested in helping to edit their Code of Conduct Google Doc.  I use Google Docs in my classroom but this was the first time I actually had a chance to use it as a collaboration tool with people from all over the world.

This was my first introduction to the amazing community of educators that are exploring the possibilities of teaching with web 2.0 tools.  I realised that all I needed in order to get involved was enthusiasm for this kind of learning and a willingness to try new things.

Trying to get all my students registered on the Ning and Wiki

I felt like I had this all under control.  After all I already belonged to a few Nings and had even started my own Ning (with me as the only member).  I had also been using Wikispaces for a while so felt comfortable with the way it worked.  What I hadn’t counted on were the countless difficulties inherent in trying to register an entire class of students for these services.  Not only did I have to figure out how to make linked gmail addresses for all my students so that I could register them, but then I had to figure out how to keep track of all the invites arriving in my mailbox and then I had to get each student to register their unique name and password.  Then I had to try and hold it together when they would come to me the next day to tell me they had forgotten their password.  This took a while and it was messy but by the time the dust settled I certainly understood these applications on a whole different level.

Throughout this process all the teachers involved in this project communicated almost exclusively through our Google Group.  I was really impressed with this simple tool that allowed many threaded conversations to take place in an asynchronous way.  I wasn’t the only teacher struggling to get everyone online and we all tried to help each other through this Group.

First Elluminate Meeting

I was quite concerned about this one.  The first challenge was to figure out what time it was in BC so that I could be online for a meeting that happened at EST (which I hoped was eastern standard time).  I eventually became quite adept at using timezoneconverter.com to quickly figure out if I could make the meeting.  I did my due diligence and tested out Elluminate before the meeting.  In fact I couldn’t make the first meeting so listened to a recording instead (a great feature of Elluminate).  When the time came for my first real synchronous online meeting I logged in and sure enough there were other people there, but when I was asked to speak no one could hear me!  Turns out I had to configure my mic and the other teachers guided me through this procedure using the chat feature built into Elluminate.  Once everything was working I had to figure out this thing called a ‘back channel chat’, that has become a staple of the web 2.0 world.  Trying to listen to the conversation going on, follow the chat and click on the links being offered ALL AT THE SAME TIME was mind boggling, but it got easier with practice.

I had known of Elluminate for a while.  I had even visited their table at a conference and collected their materials a few years back, but I had never actually used it. Being introduced to it by teachers that use it every day and with a reason and purpose was much more educational and meaningful than if I had just been playing around with it.

First attempt at reasoning in a Chat Room and starting a Discussion Thread

I have already blogged about this experience so for the full version of these events read my Digi Teen Stories post.  The short version is that shortly after getting my students on this Ning I came across some inappropriate chat in the chat room.  My first reaction was to delete the chat but then the teacher in me decided I had stumbled across a teachable moment, so I joined the chat.  Trying to convey complex reasoning and arguments in a chat room environment was incredibly frustrating and really illustrated for me the limitations of this particular form of communication.  I eventually resorted to starting a discussion thread on the topic of Digital Etiquette and was amazed at the quality and quantity of thoughtful replies I recieved.  It was really my first ever meaningful online discussion.

I could go on and on and on about the different experiences both I and my students had on the Ning.  I think the point is that by really engaging in a Social Network with my students I started to understand both the power and pitfalls of these spaces and how they could be used in education.  Some of the thinking inspired by these experiences can be found in my blog posts on: Obama, Social Networking, and Digiteen and Digiteen Experiences in the Nearly Now.

First Blog Post commented on by people from around the world

Finally, by taking the plunge and committing to this project I was having experiences that I felt like writing about.  I had started a blog a few months before but hadn’t felt very motivated to write anything.  After all the blogosphere was already full of people writing about everything I was interested in.  When Vicki Davis asked me to write a blog post about my Digiteen experiences I realised that I actually did have something to contribute.   The really neat part was that by being a part of a Global Collaborative Project I already had a small network of colleagues that read my post and wrote thoughtful comments on it, which motivated me to keep on writing.

I think that the lesson here is that if you can build up a small network of peers interested in the same stuff before you blog then you start with a small audience already, and if you know that a few people are actually reading what you write you are much more motivated to continue.

I plan on staying involved with the Digiteen project for the long haul.  I think it has really great potential as a model for how we can really teach our students about Digital Citizenship.  There will be a new project starting in April, feel free to contact me through this blog if you are interested in participating.

It all started with a great post on 21st Century Pedagogy written by Andrew Churches.  In the post he has a great Cmap (one of my favourite mind mapping tools) diagram illustrating the key features of 21st Century Pedagogy.  They are,

?    building technological, information and media fluencies [Ian Jukes]
?    Developing thinking skills
?    making use of project based learning
?    using problem solving as a teaching tool
?    using 21st C assessments with timely, appropriate and detailed feedback and reflection
?    It is collaborative in nature and uses enabling and empowering technologies
?    It fosters Contextual learning bridging the disciplines and curriculum areas

This is a great list and I agree with all the features, the problem is that there are too many.  In my busy day to day classroom teacher life I don’t have the energy or brainpower to figure out how to incorporate all of these features into my curriculum.  However, it seems to me that I actually only need to focus on project based learning and the rest logically fit into their appropriate place.

For the last 4 years I have been lucky enough to teach the IB Middle Years Program Technology Curriculum.  This is a curriculum that is very well suited to project based learning and has really opened my eyes to the power of this approach.  As a busy classroom teacher I believe that if I make it my focus to use project based and inquiry based learning effectively in my classroom then I will also be building technological, information and media fluencies, developing thinking skills, using problem solving as a teaching tool and fostering contextural learning (after all a project by it’s very nature is based on real challenges that cross curricular boundaries).  It is also collaborative in nature.

This still raises the question what good project based learning looks like.  I’m no expert but the elements that have to be there for me include:

• Using the Design Cycle explicitly.  In my classroom this means that we take the time to break down what it means to really INVESTIGATE – PLAN – CREATE – EVALUATE an end product.  We take the time to break down each of these steps into concrete actions and we agree on assessment criteria for each step before we begin (ok, if I’m being honest this doesn’t always happen, but I’m trying).  I like what Andrew Churches says about assessment:

Students should be involved in all aspects of the assessment process. Students who are involved in setting and developing assessment criteria, marking and moderation will have a clearer understanding of: what they are meant to do; how they are meant to do it; why it is significant; why it is important.

• During the INVESTIGATION stage I take the time to teach my students the skills they will need to be successul in their project.  Often this includes exposing them to knowledge, facts and information – the traditional classroom stuff.  This gives them the base they need to jump off into higher order thinking activities.  This is also where I often end up incorporating lessons on building technological, information and media fluencies.
• During the PLANNING and CREATION stages I have found a critical element of success to be the creation of Checkpoints and Milestones that groups can use to measure their ongoing progress.  I am always so busy that this is a real challenge for me, but when I do manage to structure ongoing feedback during a project the end product is always vastly superior.  Again from Andrew Churches:

Linked to assessment  is the importance of timely, appropriate, detailed and specific feedback. Feedback as a learning tool, is second only to the teaching of thinking skills [Michael Pohl].

In the funny way that these things happen I was just sent this edutopia link today about a school in Pennsylvania that is using project based learning as a vehicle for teaching 21st century skills.  They include the following excellent suggestions:

• Connect to Standards – don’t be distracted by the flash of the technology
• Plan, Plan, Plan – projects are complex, so a carefully planned framework is essential
• Expand Your Audience – using web 2.0 tools to expand the reach of students is motivating and gives projects context
• Walk a Mile in Their Sneakers – try the technoloigy yourself first.  It often takes longer than you think.
• Keep it simple (this is my biggest challenge)
• Be on the lookout -stay connected to a community of professionals.

A fairly comprehensive list of project based learning resources can also be found here.  So what have I missed?  Are there any skills or knowledge that can not be taught using a problem based learning model?  Are there any other key elements of project based learning that are essential to it’s success?

Continuous partial attention is lethal to creativity.

It was interesting to hear that someone who is a real hero of the Web 2.0 world takes great pains to keep himself unplugged so that he can maintain the focus and creativity needed to write two newspaper columns a week.

You can’t download judgement or wisdom or values.

We need to take advantage of what is new but not lose sight of what is old.

These two quotes really resonate with me when I wear my IT integrator hat.  I want the teachers at my school to feel valued for all the skills they already have and know that the important things they have to teach – judgement, wisdom, values are more important than ever.  Even if the information they teach is not as rare a commodity as it once was.

One more sound bite I really liked:

The internet will make you smarter but it won’t make you smart.