This week, I took a big leap with my classes. I am giving them control of the course. I've laid out the Challenges for them because they were pre-set prior to the year and other parties are depending on them. These challenges are not just "cool projects" that I will grade and then we put it away. These are actual needs that are in our community or program. Past the fact that they need to solve a problem for someone else through their work this year, I gave up the method of solving it to the class. They will determine everything from deliverable dates, grades, rubrics, even the details of what and how any lessons take place. When I announced it, one of the students looked at me a little worried. He said, "wow, that's scary." I know. I'm a little scared to. I know it will be great for them, but it's hard to give up control like that. To give the students a frame of reference so they can start off in a positive direction, they are treating this adventure as if they are starting their own company. In essence, the class is imagining that they have just decided to start a consulting firm. They have clients that they are completing projects for, and they have stockholders that they have to answer to as well. The clients are the people who are receiving the final products from their project challenges. The stockholders are our administration and school district. In the end, they must complete the projects professionally, on time, and with the highest quality. For the district, they must demonstrate that each and every member of the team (class) has mastered all of the state standards for the course and any other district requirements such as industry certifications. We started out using a deck of discussion cards from MethodKit. For this exercise, It makes sense that I am using the "MethodKit for Startups" pack at this point. The thing I like about MethodKit is that they use unplugged activities. The activities and tools have very little instruction. They are designed to generate and foster conversation. Through this, the team is able to quickly get to a point of consensus about where they are going, what is important now, and what can be dealt with later. I started with the card deck. I gave each student a couple of cards. They are to communicate only by placing and moving cards. No notes, no talking. The task at this moment is to place the cards in order of importance from highest to lowest. As they place the cards, they will see other cards they want to move. If someone moves their card, this isn't a criticism or personal attack. it is them communicating their feelings on the importance of those items. The others are asked to think about what is being communicated by the movement. When we got done, we had a short discussion about what was at the "important" end and what was at the "much later" end. All of the cards need to be addressed, but we have to come to an agreement on what needs to be dealt with now. Then we moved to the Start Up Canvas. I printed it off on regular paper so that they had small spaces to write in. I wanted them to be concise. The questions made them think about their goals and how they would know they met them. Through a couple of rounds of "pair-share", we got to the point where the entire class had agreed on a final set of decisions. The cool thing was that they classes all had similar framing questions, such as "How do we prove mastery of the standards by producing a complete set of engineering drawings of a top 3 solar car in nine months?" The target goal in this case is a complete set of engineering drawings with engineering analysis that should place the car in the top 3 of the solar car challenge. In addition, they will provide the district with documentation of industry certification in SolidWorks and mastery of all course standards for each student. The best part is listening to them start the conversation of how they are defining mastery, the evidence necessary, and how they will hold each other accountable for getting it all done. Stay tuned for more updates. This is going to be fun.
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About me & this blogThis blog is for things related to my class, PL, coaching, or just teaching in general. You can follow me on Twitter @myakSTEM Archives
June 2021
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