As I was looking on the High Tech High website, I searched through the High Tech Middle North County projects and was impressed in what this school has accomplished with it's students. The first project I looked at was the Dr. Seuss Project. First of all, I love Dr. Seuss so I absolutely fell in love with this idea! Students were asked to write their own story based on the writing elements that were used in Dr.Seuss' books. Then the students were asked to use a multimedia tool to create an interactive story. I watched videos that students had created and their stories were inspiring and very Seuss-like. This project demonstrated various forms of 21st literacies, such as critical (writing a story and making it Seuss-like), and technological (use of multimedia). Click here to watch one of the videos I really enjoyed, presented by Emily.
Another fascinating project I found was entitled "In My Life." Students were asked to reflect and determine what events in their lives do they think made a significant impact. The students had to express why this event is important and why it may be valuable to tell others. Students displayed their events in a timeline that was displayed in chronological order. After, students presented their personal narrative to their classmates. This project was really interesting because it focuses on character education, a 21st century literacy that is not often seen in the classroom. Whether because it is hard to include, or there's no time, most teachers do not often focus on building a child's character as much as they do building them as a life-long learner. Both of these should be of equal and vital importance in the teacher's agenda. There are various learning styles that benefit different students in the classroom so the idea of having a visual, written and spoken element to this project gives every student the chance to excel. A group and an individual form of work was displayed as seen in the photos below.
As I read about project-based learning and looked through the various projects students have been given on High Tech High, I found myself thinking about a TED talk I have watched previously. Grant Lichtman presented a talk on March 22, 2013 entitled "What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills". Grant proposed a lot of interesting ideas however, we cannot expect them to be applied within our schools anytime soon because as Grant said, "institutional change is really hard" (Grant Lichtman, 2013). Our education system has a long way to go and we will get there gradually with small steps. The goal of schools are to be adaptive, dynamic and creative. Project-based learning is a good step towards this goal. While Grant Lichtman discussed an ideal school that our society will hopefully achieve one day in the future, there are other ways to make effective and successful changes to our education system.
I hope you enjoyed reading about what I have learned in my course and how I will take it forward with me in my hopes to becoming a future educator. Thank you for reading my blog!