Tag:

problem based learning

Gamifying PBL: Smashboard Edu

by Miguel Guhlin March 19, 2019

written by Miguel Guhlin

Want to increase students’ retention of content? Want to help students leave school prepared for deeper learning, higher-level thinking? Then Project-Based Learning (PBL) aligns wells to your goals. Extensive research over time supports PBL as THE best response to tough questions. In this blog entry, we’ll revisit some of the research. Then we will explore a new tool that facilitates gamifying PBL.

Revisiting the Research

No matter where you look, whether in K-12 or higher education, PBL stands tall. Want to become a doctor? Problem-Based Learning (also abbreviated as PBL), a close sibling to project-based learning, is a pedagogical practice. Structured PBL units empower students to “create conceptual models” to solve a problem. From K-12 to medical school, PBL is the go-to multi-disciplinary system. It encourages self-directed learning, targets higher-order learning, and engages students (source: Journal of Biological Chemistry).

PBL has found its way into many classrooms. You can see my own journey with PBL in this wakelet on Exploring PBL.

PBL

Key Components of PBL

Various researchers have cited the following elements as essential to PBL success. These elements include:

Starting with a real-life problem that is high interest and aligned to the curriculum
Structured cooperative learning that is interdependent and features team rewards and accountability
More than one opportunity for assessment, differentiated learning outcomes, and presentations
Connecting learners to other learners via a learning network.

Each of these points aligns to the ISTE Standards for Students as well.

Aligning the ISTE Standards for Students

Consider the corresponding ISTE Student Standard Connection for each point above:

Element #1: Real-Life Problem
- Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions.
Element #2: Cooperative Learning
- Global Collaborator: Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.
Element #3: Differentiated Learning Opportunities
- Creative Communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.
- Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others
Element #4: Connected Learners
- Digital Citizen: Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical.

Blending technology into PBL makes problem solving, learning, and solution making a digital reality. Aligning it to the ISTE Standards for Students makes it a fantastic opportunity. Yet in the fast-paced video game environment our children learn in, how can we make PBL even more?

Gamifying Problem-Based Learning

Many of our children play games that engage them with problems. The Pew Research Center has made some relevant findings that gamifying learning stimulates interest and deep engagement with content. John Seelye Brown, as cited here, describes the power of accidental learning. Accidental learning is learning on the go, solving problems as they appear. Accidental learning relies on failure. “The chance of failure is high, but the cost is low and the lessons learned are immediate,” says Brown.

Smashboard EDU is “problem-based learning & the design-thinking process smashed into a gamified experience.” Their goal is to be encourage creative solutions to a relevant, real-world problem. It follows a simple process:

Prep: Pick a Problem to Smash!
Setup: Each group of three or four receives a set of cards and a device and selects a note-taker.
Play: Follow the steps for each card in order. Use the SOS card ONCE to ask for help from the facilitator.

Watch this short video for an overview.

Let’s assess this new website. We’ll use the key elements to successful PBL to guide our exploration.

Element #1 – Real-Life Problem

“My 6th graders have smashed energy conservation, ecological concerns, and social awareness issues,” says Marilyn McAlister (@MarilynEDU). Does Smashboard Edu present students with relevant, real-life problems aligned to curriculum? Yes, it offers a variety of pre-set problem cards. You can also rely on authentic situations via online websites. Read more about Marilyn’s experiences with SmashboardEdu:

One of our favorite problem-solving structures is #SmashboardEdu. It is a gamified process for solving problems. Over the course of two class periods, students identify the problem, research, solve, share, and reflect. Shout out to Ed Tech Team leader, @DeeLanier, for his fabulous bank of resources here. We used this slide deck to guide our sessions.

Elements #2 and #3

Does Smashboard Edu enable you to use digital tools to empower collaboration and communication? The answer is a resounding YES. Consider this Flipgrid where students share their reflection of the problem-solving process. Meta-problem-solving can be a real aid to students working together.

PBL

Empowering students depends on how they use Smashboard Edu. Learners may use it as a springboard to produce creative artifacts, as shown in the image below.

Image Source: https://twitter.com/cmsbusiness1/status/1096404176744169472

Element #4

Smashboard Edu makes it possible to have students learn in an interconnected, digital world. This is less about Smashboard Edu and more about the tools (e.g. Flipgrid) that students choose to use. Encouraging students to work well together, in the classroom and across classrooms, is important.

March 19, 2019 0 comment

Social Studies

Napkin PD: A PBL Approach to Texas History

by Miguel Guhlin June 18, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Like Davy Crockett, I got to Texas as fast as I could. Arriving as a ten year old, the son of a Swedish immigrant family descendant (my father, who served in the army during the Korean Conflict) who married a Panamanian educator (my mother), I grew up studying Texas history. As a Texas immigrant myself, the fictional tales of Texas settlement and independence enthralled me. Forget the Alamo had yet to inform educators of what actually happened and why. As an educator, I often wished that I had easy access to fantastic resources and projects. One resource I missed completely included the Texas General Land Office (GLO). In this blog entry, we will explore a few projects based on Texas GLO Education Resources and Lesson Plans.

texasglo

Image Source: Texas General Land Office (GLO)

The General Land Office’s main role is to manage Texas’s publicly owned lands, by negotiating and enforcing leases for the use of the land, and sometimes by making sales of public lands. Royalties and proceeds from land sales are added to the state’s Permanent School Fund, which helps to fund public education within the state.[2] The agency is also responsible for keeping records of land grants and titles and for issuing maps and surveys of public lands. Since 2011 the GLO has managed The Alamo in San Antonio (Source: Wikipedia)

A PBL Approach to Texas History

Having grown up in Texas, I often consider the rich (albeit problematic) history of Texas and how it influences the current state of affairs. One way to introduce students to the approved version involves implementing a problem-based learning (PBL) approach. I like PBL, not only because it is well supported in the research, but because it takes a fresh approach towards old problems. What student of history hasn’t asked himself how he might have responded in a different way to historical problems? PBL puts students in the situation and forces them to consider it from a stakeholder perspective. In the projects in this blog entry, you will get the chance to see some examples of that. These activities pose a scenario and a project task.

Each project involves three steps, including:

Step 1 – Choose a Project or Come Up with Your Own: While a project is suggested, since participants are adult learners, they have the option to develop their own task. This step presents a problem scenario and a task.
Step 2 – Explore and Create: In this step, adult learners explore a variety of resources that can help them achieve the task. These often involve focusing on the various technologies, as well as other curated items.
Step 3 – Share: In a final step, participants turn their final project in. This artifact will often take the form of a video, image, or link to a digital document (e.g. OneNote, Slide deck, Google Doc).

As you can see, these steps provide a consistent framework that allows participants to move from project to project, exploring tools and topics of interest. Include QR codes on the one pager to make it easy for students to access projects.

NapkinPD

Get your own copy of the infographic via Google Slides

Let’s take a brief, closer look at some of these PBL activities with a focus on the Texas GLO resources embedded in each. For fun, here’s another one I made just in case folks were bored:

View digital version: https://go.mgpd.org/ccptm

Project #1 – Victory or Death

In Victory or Death, participants are engaged with the following scenario and task:

Modern students are wondering how Commander Travis could have done a better job asking for help. As a result, the 21st Century Historical Time Bureau has contracted with your team to re-think Commander Travis’ call to action. Take a moment to read the letter, then come up with a 21st Century equivalent to a call for action. Create a product that models various ways Commander Travis could have sent out a more effective call to action.

Workshop participants rely on a variety of tools to create their 21st Century call to action. In this activity, participants can use tools like iMovie (free), and/or PicCollage (example). These have resulted in some fascinating examples and creations from past workshop participants.

The real star of the show is the Texas GLO education resources that include the following:

SAVE THE DATE:

Attend the Annual Save Texas History Symposium. Learn more at this fun event.

Project #2 – Digital Commemorative Map

In Digital Commemorative Map, participants create a digital version of a traditional commemorative map.

The local historical society has bemoaned that students in your classes lack a real appreciation for commemorative maps and history. You and your team resolve to make a digital tour that honors the state’s past around a particular subject. How could you create a digital, interactive commemorative map or document that features maps?

The Texas GLO website includes a variety of map-related resources. For example, the Launch Texas Hidden History provides an interactive map of Texas. You can click on icons that show what Texas looked like then compared to now.

Image Source: Texas Hidden History

Want To See More?

Want to see what other incredible resources Texas GLO Education Resources have available to support projects in your classroom? Be sure to visit the resources for my session, Class Collaboration Projects. The GLO resources include Texas history and coast lesson plan and activities. You can also find other interesting resources at the main GLO site.

Turn Napkin PD into a Reality

Want to schedule TCEA professional learning for your school district that focuses on inquiry-based learning? Fill out a TCEA logistics form, as well as attend our face-to-face conferences and the annual TCEA Convention. We can help you turn your napkin professional development plans into a reality.

June 18, 2018 0 comment

Announcements/Important Dates STEM/STEAM

Check Out These 3D Design Problem-Solvers

by Susan Meyer May 18, 2018

written by Susan Meyer

You can’t change the weather, but you can change the world. And that’s exactly what these students are doing. This year, the challenge posed by TCEA’s 3D Design Contest was how to design a 3D solution to a real-world problem associated with the weather.

The goal of the contest is to let students be creators and so the students are the ones in charge of defining a problem and using the engineering design process to come up with a workable solution. From a more efficient wind turbine to grass stakes to prevent erosion following hurricanes, these students delivered with creativity and well-researched follow through.

This year the contest had two categories: Intermediate (Grades 6-8) and Advanced (Grades 9-12). In addition to creating the actual product design, the students also kept a detailed log of their engineering process. They also created a marketing campaign to showcase their product’s value. Check out the top three winners in each category below and get to know their incredible ideas.

Intermediate Winners

First Place: Design Thinkers, Walkin’ Weather

The winning team from Lewisville ISD considered how the weather can inconvenience individuals who use a walker to get around. This makes it hard for them to hold an umbrella. The Design Thinkers were on the case! They created an umbrella holder that attaches to a walker, leaving those with mobility issues comfortable and dry.

Design mockup of the Walkin’ Weather

Second Place: Roughneck Tech Club, Flood Protector

Flooding, like what occurred in the Houston area after Hurricane Harvey, can cause great devastation and the destruction of property. To help protect people’s homes and businesses from a sudden deluge, the team from White Oak ISD designed underground trenches and grates that could help drain water throughout a city.

Third Place: Rattler 3D Design Team, The Floating Mister

The team from Clint ISD also had hurricanes on the brain. However, instead of preventing the damage caused by a storm, they wanted to stop the storm in its tracks. After researching to learn that hurricanes can only continue to gather strength over waters that are 79 degrees or warmer, they designed a device that would fly over the water, sprinkling water droplets to cool the surface directly in the path of the storm.

Advanced Winners

First Place: Pecos Engineering, EiW 360 Turbine

For their world-changing innovation, the team from Pecos Barstow Toyah ISD considered how the weather can help

One design iteration of the wind turbine from the 2018 3D Design Contest Advanced winner

us. West Texas is a great location for potential wind energy. However, current wind turbines don’t capture it as efficiently as they could. Their design “integrates the gravitation water vortex power plant design with a basic Persian windmill design” for peak performance and less of this valuable alternative energy wasted.

Second Place: Brazoswood Engineering, Grass Guardian

A prototype of the Grass Guardian

In yet another thoughtful response to considering how to limit the impact of large-scale storm systems, the team from Brazosport ISD designed a tool to replace plants drowned by flood waters and prevent erosion on river banks. They designed grass stakes from a material that is easy to 3D print, but also dissolves in water. The stakes can be used to plant seeds for erosion-resistant ground cover.

Third Place: West Texas Comanches 3D Modeling Team, Outdoor Fire-Detecting Sprinkler System

The team from Plemons-Stinnett-Phillips CISD focused on a problem facing much of Texas in the dry summer months: the spread of wildfires. If indoor sprinkler systems can detect fires and save properties, why couldn’t an outdoor sprinkler system do the same thing? Their 3D design uses pop-up sprinkler heads with fire-detecting technology to prevent wildfires from spreading to people’s properties, saving both homes and lives.

Congratulations to All the Teams!

At TCEA, we want to give a big congratulations to all of the teams and their sponsors who entered our second annual 3D Design Contest. We were blown away by the incredible ideas these students had for combating some pretty big problems.

Do you have a team of STEM problem-solvers ready to change the world? Find out more about the 3D Design Contest and how you can enter a team next year here.

May 18, 2018 0 comment

Good Teaching Microsoft Tips and Tricks

Collaborative Projects in PBL, Part One

by Miguel Guhlin July 5, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

“What’s the best way to approach collaborative projects for elementary students?” I asked my wife, a veteran elementary teacher. I had some inkling of the response, since a portion of my work in schools was with third and fifth graders. For my own children, the elements of success included playing with others in real time, simulations, the opportunity to engage in real life projects, and sharing their work with a global audience.

Let’s give Generation Z students what they want. What do they want? They want to be:

Media-makers: Use digital media (create/study with videos/podcasts)
Hands-on: Learn through hands-on experiences
Social: Develop team-building skills
Problem-solvers: Solve real-world problems

Let’s quickly explore the elements of project-based learning in the context of those four Gen Z skills.

Element #1 – Real World Relevance

A PBL activity presents a real life problem (e.g. immigration, border patrol, “The Wall”) that captures students’ imagination. It engages them emotionally and intellectually. Over time, they learn to see this problem through the eyes of all stakeholders and develop a multi-faceted solution.

Image Credit: The Penna Group as cited by National Public Radio (NPR)

Seek the Crucial

Ready to get started with PBL, but not sure what issue would best capture student interest and be teachable? Any problem will do. In fact, look for what the author of a popular book series call a crucial conversation. You can recognize the crucial when you find it if you keep these points in mind:

Stakes are high
Opinions vary
Emotions run strong

Are you worried that this could get you in hot water at work? Yes, it is possible. Let’s figure out how to not find yourself in the unemployment line.

Ensure the Crucial Doesn’t Get You Fired

When creating your problem, follow these steps:

1) Make a Problem Map. These are questions about the problem you want to see students answered. You may discover other questions that students want answered, but are not navigable in your community. Write those questions down, but mark them as distractions. The focus isn’t on getting lost with precious cargo. Keep the questions that will move the talk forward, not drop you into the Bermuda Triangle.

2) Revise Your Map into a Learning Map. What curriculum standards/objectives do you want to connect to specific questions? Questions that don’t lead to learning can be cut.

3) Pitch Your Problem. Craft an elevator pitch you can share with others. Listeners will feel the emotional and learning potential. This is where you can use technology to connect to real-world problems.

4) Plan the Path you will take with your students. You will explore what they believe they know, then their guesses and hunches. Use thinking organizers (e.g. KWHL) to scaffold learning potential.

With your learning map and path planned, ask yourself, “How can I connect my classroom to real-world problems?”

Use Technology to Get Connected to Real-World Problems

We have rich access to problems. Adapt an authentic problem, develop a mirror image of one to distance learners from fallout, and align it to learning objectives. One of the obstacles for teachers jumping into PBL is that it takes a lot of work to develop a project from scratch. Remember, you are not alone.

Connecting with Real People

One approach involves relying on synchronous communication tools (e.g. Skype or Google Hangouts) or digging for problem scenarios on YouTube or Vimeo. Whether you are bringing a subject matter expert (SME) into your classroom to introduce a problem or question, or accessing a video that frames the problem or provides historical context, this is one hundred percent better than the teacher doing it.

Skype virtual field trips and guest speakers are one approach. The Skype in the Classroom folks have taken great pains to make speakers available for you to meet and problems for your students to solve (e.g. sea turtle conservation, climate change, nuclear fallout).

End of Part One: Collaborative Projects for Elementary Students

In this first article in the series, we explored how to connect real-world problems (without getting fired) to your classroom learning objectives. In part two, we will explore creating prolonged engagement and create context and tasks that matter.

July 5, 2017 0 comment

Good Teaching Professional Learning

PBL Planning: Begin with the End in Mind

by Miguel Guhlin August 17, 2016

written by Miguel Guhlin

“The Superintendent just called. The marquee in front of the football stadium hasn’t been connected yet.” I stared at the phone in my hand in disbelief.

When my team got together, I reviewed the facts of the situation with them. “There’s a big game tonight and the Superintendent really wants to see that marquee operational. When we spoke earlier, I had the impression the job had been finished last week.”

“Apparently,” quipped one technician, “it’s not.”

“Thanks a lot, Captain Obvious,” muttered the network engineer responsible for the job.

Dialogue-rich scenarios like this one, whether in text, image, or video format, are often sufficient to engage adults or K-12 learners in solving a problem. For adults, the focus may be on generating problem-solving strategies, while for students, the goal may be to achieve an instructional objective.

For example, in a recent lesson connected to the 5E + Technology Model, I referred to this past Christmas controversy surrounding hoverboards.

KSAT 12, a San Antonio news station, has contacted the school and asked us to investigate exploding hoverboards. What they are asking is, simply speaking, “How do hoverboards work and are they are safe?”

The length of the scenario determines the scope of the curriculum and goals to be addressed. In the scenario above for hoverboards, the relevant TEKS include:

4.6(A) Differentiate among forms of energy, including mechanical, sound, electrical, light, and heat/thermal.

4.6(B) Differentiate between conductors and insulators.

4.6(C) Demonstrate that electricity travels in a closed path, creating an electrical circuit, and explore an electromagnetic field.

4.6(D) Design an experiment to test the effect of force on an object such as a push or a pull, gravity, friction, or magnetism.

Problem-based learning (PBL), often labelled project-based learning, relies on real-life problems modeled after a contemporary or historical case to engage students as they pursue specified learning outcomes that are in line with academic standards or course objectives (Stepien & Pyke, 1997). Learners work through the problem as a stakeholder.

The teacher, or professional learning leader, acts as a guide/advisor as students explore the issues involved, formulate questions, conduct research, and consider possible solutions to the problems. An critical component for PBL planners is to reflect on questions like the following:

What did we really want them to learn?
Why was it important that they learn this?
What problems or issues would they be able to resolve with the information?
What process, if any, do we want them to follow? Was that process governed by policy? Which ones in particular?

These questions help us to first map out what we want students to learn and thus craft a problem that reflects that and aligns to learning objectives. Keep these questions in mind when crafting your next PBL unit.

Join the ongoing TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) SkypeChat via your mobile device or online. Explore and share concepts at the intersection of teaching, learning, leading, and technology!

August 17, 2016 0 comment