By Lee Prater Yost
The task: To create a one-minute video about how sugar farmers contribute to Florida's economy.Sound like fun? Yes! Sound like school? Maybe.
The tools: Data and a video camera.
The teams: Fifth graders in teams of five representing farmers, developers and environmentalists
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At Grandview Prep School, a private K-12 school in Boca Raton, Florida, the fifth graders love making videos. Some operate the camera, while others are scriptwriters or actors. All are film critics. "They are following their passion, and, in the process, they're learning," says Diana Joseph, a Learning Sciences (LS) alumna. Photo by Richard Sheinwald. |
At Grandview Prep School, a private K-12 school in Boca Raton, Florida, the fifth graders love making videos. Some operate the camera, while others are scriptwriters or actors. All are film critics. "They are following their passion, and, in the process, they're learning," says Diana Joseph, a Learning Sciences (LS) alumna.
Joseph (PhD00) initially developed the "Video Crew" curriculum in her dissertation work at Northwestern. She and fellow LS alum Tammy Berman (PhD02) adapted and combined various curricula including "Video Crew" and "Water Quality" (developed with the University of Michigan) to create a coherent learning experience about the Everglades, says Berman.
Last summer the two Northwestern alumnae worked with the Grandview fifth-grade teachers to integrate the curricula into program planning in time for the new school year.
Joseph and Berman visit Grandview frequently to observe class, advise the teachers and take field notes on how well the curricula are working. These site visits are a practical application of Joseph's work as a researcher and curriculum designer at the University of Chicago's Center for School Improvement and Berman's design activities for Engines for Education, a nonprofit group that spearheaded the Grandview project.
"After eight years of designing courses for the corporate and university worlds, I'm excited to bring goal-based learning and story-centered curricula to K-12 schools," says Berman, who is a postdoctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University's Institute for Software Research International.
Video Crew follows the cognitive apprenticeship model, which assumes that kids start out with different levels of expertise and, as they gain experience, mentor other apprentices, says Northwestern Learning Sciences Professor Allan Collins. In his article "Cognitive Apprenticeship and the Changing Workplace," Collins argues that in today's complex world, students need a different model for learning. While at Northwestern Joseph and Berman brainstormed with Collins on how to restructure learning environments along the lines of the cognitive apprenticeship model.
" An apprenticeship embeds the learning of skills and knowledge in their social and functional context. This has serious implications for instructional design," says Collins.
Using Video Crew Grandview fifth graders take on real-life roles as camera operator, actor or scriptwriter and earn certificates of expertise-much like the Scout merit badge system. Along with a certificate come certain rights-permission to check the camera out overnight-and responsibilities-to help train other students.
In addition to creating videos, the students design Web sites to support the Everglades project. They work as a team, doing background research on the Internet, writing copy and designing the site. Because the students are learning actual skills needed in today's society, they are motivated and their work is authentic.
" It's clear from motivational and cognitive science research that people learn based on their goals," says Joseph. "So it stands to reason that we should create learning environments that use and even shape learner goals in the service of what we want students to learn."
At this South Florida prep school, the pollution of the Everglades is an authentic problem that is close to home and easy for the students to understand. The fifth graders learn about Everglades pollution through field trips and Internet research. By collecting and analyzing water samples, they discover that only 10 percent of the water in the Everglades is viable to wildlife. Yet two important components of Florida's economy are sugar production and land development, both of which contribute to pollution.
The 27 students are divided into three teams: sugar farmers, developers and environmentalists. CANES (Coalition for Advancing the Needs of Everglades Sugar) are the farmers; CEASE (Coalition of Environmental Activists for Saving Everglades) are the environmentalists; and DIGG (Developers Invested in Glades Growth) are the developers. The teams' interests are clearly in conflict with each other. Herein lies the dilemma: which team is "right"?
" A story-centered, goal-directed curriculum provides students with motivation to learn," says Collins, who worked closely with Northwestern professor emeritus Roger Schank, currently academic dean of Grandview Prep and Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
" Roger and I used to discuss learning environments and ideal schools," says Collins. Grandview Prep now provides Schank a working model for those ideas.
Each fifth-grade team makes an argument, creates a video and a Web site to support its cause and seeks to persuade the other teams to join its side. At the end of the school year, however, the entire class must join together to create a unified argument and culminating project.
" This process teaches the students a civics lesson: in life people have to compromise," says Betsy Mayell, one of the two fifth-grade teachers. "Through the project the kids also learn leadership, cooperation, give and take."
The video and Web projects integrate thinking, creative writing, grammar, math skills and observation. The fact that only one-tenth of the Everglades is not polluted or set aside for development leads to questions: what happened to the other 90 percent? Can we clean it up? Did the developers destroy it? Parents have noticed that their children are more observant at home and ask more questions.
The videos and Web sites are works in progress. Throughout the school year. the teams periodically view and critique each others' creations, looking for originality, graphics-and humor. They also have lively discussions about plagiarism, learning that sources need to be quoted and research needs to be rewritten in their own words. The critiques are important learning tools, and the language used is carefully chosen. The terms "wishes" and "pluses" take the sting out of criticism.
The kids keep "wishes" and "pluses" in mind when it's time for CEASE to show its video "The Man in the Field." At the end of the video the actors run away screaming because South Florida is sinking. CANES and DIGG agree on the "pluses": It was funny and the blackouts were effective. The "wishes"? Tone down the sound effects so narration can be heard, and present solid evidence that Florida is actually sinking.
Through such "useful failures" teachers help their students learn by trial and error what to change on the next revision.
Next the class evaluates the Web sites. Some of the "pluses" are solid information, specific points and useful graphics. For instance, the CEASE site includes a photo of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the first defender of the Everglades (1890-1988). Including her photo and bio helps CEASE advance its cause. "Wishes" are for more details, more facts to back up the argument, better proofreading and a clearer message.
In addition to learning to identify the "driving question"- in other words, the site's message-the students are learning about time management, cooperation and leadership. Students responded eagerly to the Web critiques:
" I wish we'd had more time to make the Web site."
" Right when I thought I knew what I was doing, time was up."The fifth graders are having fun-and learning. So are the eighth and 12th graders, through special curricula developed just for them.
The eighth graders' task is to create Webzines-online magazines about sports, cars and music, favorite teen topics. In the process, students gain expertise in the real-world roles of editor, designer, reporter, art director, copy editor, Web programmer, proofreader and managing editor.
Creating a successful Webzine is the goal, and "goal-based scenarios, which are a particular realization of cognitive apprenticeship, provide a means of integrating situated (contextual) and abstract learning," says Collins.
Grandview seniors also have a goal. They focus on writing and computer science with a curriculum developed in part by Berman that places the students in the role of an eBusiness Technology Task Force within a fictional company. "Moffett Foods" is technologically behind the times, and the students' must bring the company up to speed. They, too, work in teams to design technology-based solutions to Moffet's inefficiencies. They learn HTML and JAVA programming languages to implement the solutions they design. At the end of the year, each student develops an eBusiness Web site for an actual organization in South Florida.
While Grandview Prep is not a "passion school" per se, since each grade follows the same curriculum, rather than choosing their own "passion," the school incorporates ideas of learning design hatched by Collins and Schank at Northwestern as they envisioned creating an ideal school. Schank has also coached all the teachers to replace lecture-style teaching with project-based teaching.
New project-based curricula continues to be developed for Grandview's other grades. Berman and others recently began to design an 11th grade hospital curriculum in conjunction with the Veterans Administration. Students will work in a variety of capacities on projects in an actual V.A. hospital as well as doing complementary classroom work.
Northwestern University's Learning Sciences faculty and students have developed ideas for restructuring schooling that have revolutionary implications. "Our hope," says Collins, "is that putting these ideas into practice will have a major impact on student motivation and learning and will better prepare students for the complex world they are entering."
Editor's Note: For more information about cognitive apprenticeships, see Collins, A. (November 1997). Cognitive apprenticeship and the changing workplace. In Proceedings of the Fifth Annual International Conference on Post-Compulsory Education and Training, Queensland, Australia.