PBL in Hand April 2011

Tony Vincent April 2011

In project based learning, students work over an extended period of time answering a driving question. The question is so deep that it requires students to create a project to share their findings with others,

Projects take an extended period of time to complete. Activities can be completed in a a matter of a few class periods.

Do you want to cover material for students or do you want them to uncover it for themselves?

Create a grading rubric with student input. Rubistar is a great place to design rubrics.

Example Driving Questions:

How should prisoners be treated?
What is the American Dream and who has it?
Which element of the periodic table is most important?
What if a football field was a triangle?
Why doesn’t the U.S. use the metric system?
How can we best stop the flu at our school?
Which simple machine is most important to you?
Should government bail out businesses?
Is it better to buy or lease a car?
What makes a good vice president?

View the pinboard with the driving questions we brainstormed.

Add parameters to the driving question to ensure that standards are met.

What makes a good vice president?

Include the branch of government the position is part of.
Include the roles and powers of the position.
Explain how someone is elected or appointed to the position.
Include information about at least two people who have held the position.
Explain the role of the position in Gerald Ford's succession to presidency.
Include how the office holder is positioned in the line of succession to the presidency.
Include at least one map, chart, or graph.
Give the project your personal touch.

Tony Vincent’s What Makes a Good Vice President narrated slideshow.

Example rubric for What Makes a Good Vice President?

Driving Question Tips

Where are the standards/content used in the real world?
Cannot be answered with copy and paste
Will the result create something new?
Student voice and choice
Personal and/or local
What? What if? Which?

Refine the Quetion

Shorten as much as possible.
Question should appeal to students.
Make it personal or local.
As much room for student voice and choice as possible.

An anchor activity gets students excited, interested, and curious about the topic of the driving question. Apps, podcasts, iTunes U content, and websites can be used in the anchor activity.

Idea Sketch is a universal app for concept mapping with diagram and outline views.

Atomic Web Browser is a universal web browser app with tabs.

Side by Side for iPad allows for up to 4 web pages, notes, or drawings to be displayed at once.

Google Pagerank System for Search Results

Remember: Anyone can put anything on the Web!

Homemade spacecraft made with a weather ballon and iPhone recorded video from 100,000 ft. Watch the video about the project.

Giving students a choice in how they present their project increases engagment.

Record audio using iPod touch’s built-in Voice Memos app or download an app like Audio Memos Free for iPad. Audio recordings can be used for interviews, skits, and reports.

Speaking Tips

Enunciate clearly
Speak at a normal volume
Talk as if you are speaking to a friend
Prepare & practice
Record in short portions
Reduce background noise
Smile!

Posterous.com is the “dead simple place to post anything by email.” Accounts are free and it’s a great way for students to turn in work and share projects. Check out colts5.posterous.com. The Posterous page we use for this workshop is inhand.posterous.com. Emailing post@inhand.posterous.com put it in moderation for Tony to see approve.

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories

The Photos app is where images are saved to and imported from.

Doodle Buddy is a free drawing app for iPod and iPad.

Comic Touch Lite is a free iPod touch app for adding speech bubbles and call outs to an image.

Bump is a free iPod touch app for exchanging images between two devices.

Strip Designer is a $2.99 universal app for making comic books.

Juxio is a free iPhone app for combining images and text in attractive ways.

Maps is the built-in app for browsing Google Maps, including satellite and street views.

How to Take Screenshots:

Adobe Photoshop Express is a free universal app for rotating, cropping, and enhacing images.

Storyrobe is a free iPod touch app for narrating a series of images. Slide shows cannot exceed three minutes in length. The final movie is uploaded to Storyrobe’s website where a URL for teh video is generated.

SonicPics is a $1.99 iPod touch app for narrating a series of images. It has no time limit.

Storykit is a free iPod touch app for creating a webpage with boxes. Each box can contain text, images, and an audio recording. See Tony Vincent’s What Makes a Good Vice President example.

Sketchy by GoKnow is a 99¢ iPod touch app for drawing animations. It has a text tool. There currently no way to export the animations.

Flipbook Lite is a free app for drawing animations. There is no text tool. One animation can be share to the flipbook.tv website. The full version of Flipbook is $4.99.

eClicker is a free app and eClicker Host is $9.99. Used together as a student response system.

Some info and links Tony shared about mobile movie making.

iear.org for educational app reviews by educators

Tony Vincent’s list of lists of educational apps

Tony Vincent on Twitter shares educational apps that are on sale.

Twitter users are tagging tweets that mention an educational apps with #edapp. Search Twitter for #edapp to see them.

Check out Mobile Learning Experience 2012 April 11-13in Phoenix, Arizona.

Email Tony Vincent with questions and successes!