Basically,
I thought I had a pretty firm grasp on PBL. I was wrong; it’s
super-complicated. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that every time I
think I have a curriculum and individual projects worked out, I wind up finding
that they need more work as I implement them. I reflect on that and try to
refine the assignments and then implement them again, and go through the same
process. It’s like I can never get an assignment perfect. I guess that’s
telling about me personally, as I always tell my kids that there’s always room
for improvement, but for once I’d like to sit back and say, “yep, I’m finally
done tweaking that one.”
PBL
is messy. I think that’s one of the things that a lot of teachers (especially
those who haven’t studied PBL or have never been around it) don’t get. What is
organic learning and problem solving looks unstructured to uninitiated eye.
Allowing student choice and facilitating learning, not just disseminating it,
feels very open-ended, and at times even a little chaotic. Trying to teach good
time-management and self-regulation skills while trying to teach complicated
technical and artistic concepts simultaneously is difficult to say the least.
It’s not difficult in a bad way, it’s just exhausting at times, especially the
whole aspect of never being quite finished with an assignment or curriculum.
The
biggest thing I’ve learned with the website assignment is that I have to find
the right balance of being open-ended yet still having enough guidelines that
they don’t overwhelmed. I also still haven’t found a way to solidly integrate
the website into the curriculum in that some of the kids still don’t quite get
it. I think the key to that is maybe through the critiques and/or delivery of
their assignments.
Creating
a website to show off your work is such a personal thing in that the best ones
are always by the students who are the most intrinsically motivated. In terms
of collaboration, other than critique, it’s a pretty personal assignment. I
guess if they were creating a website for a client, that would be different,
but then we venture more into the realm of web design and less into the scope
of what my program covers (in 12 years, I’ve been asked by clients to build a
website + photos once, maybe twice).
I
also learned that to use their websites as a way to mark growth, I need to
somehow record the changes in their websites over the course of the semester
since the product by natures is, in theory, ever-evolving.
In
terms of growth after looking at the first versions and looking at later
version, they for the most part to implement the concept of “less is more” in
their decisions on which photos to include on their websites, which is a good
thing.
Examples
of good student websites:
Hannah
I definitely am going to further refine the project in terms of trying to better layout what I want them to do, and I’m going to try to better monitor the sites so that I can more easily measure growth. I am also going to try to figure out a way to be incorporate it into the overall curriculum, because even though it’s not as bad as it used to be, it still feels like something that’s just been tacked on.
-Austin Baker
I definitely am going to further refine the project in terms of trying to better layout what I want them to do, and I’m going to try to better monitor the sites so that I can more easily measure growth. I am also going to try to figure out a way to be incorporate it into the overall curriculum, because even though it’s not as bad as it used to be, it still feels like something that’s just been tacked on.
-Austin Baker
Hi Austin,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I couldn't help myself! As soon as I saw you included links to your students' photography websites, I had to scroll immediately down and check them out. They are impressive. I know it is cliche to say a picture holds a thousand words, but a website built by a highschooler to market themselves as a budding photographer holds a million of them!...I was so impressed by their work. Emily's photo essay of the band members and the interactions with their instruments that she captures was powerful. They were beautiful on their own, but together you could almost hear the songs come through the paintings without a single note. What stood out to me about Abby's was how eclectic her best images were - some were these creative still shots of objects in nature, and others were these colorful candid shots of people. Her reflections combined with her pictures gave a great insight into what she learned throughout the class. Hannah’s reflections were polished and creative all at the same time, like her one word critiques. I also liked how she played with colors and light, especially the converse shoe picture. Something about that one made your eye keep coming back. Her photos definitely inspired thought.
For PBL to be messy and organic, it sure does inspire some creative, impressive work. I think it's because it is challenging with planning backwards from the end outcome and the driving question to help provide the just right balance of support and independence to keep students' motivated and creating in a continuous, ongoing fashion. You shared how you want to continue working towards helping students build the website as they go, monitoring sites in order to measure growth and provide differentiated levels of support, and provide a way to incorporate it into the curriculum in a substantive way.
Thanks! Dawn