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| Blazing Trails with Online
Project-Based Learning A science teacher discusses how project-based learning became a rich learning experience at her school. By Christy Blauer |
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a pre-service teacher studying at the University of Kansas, I became
hooked on technology and excited about all the possibilities of extended
learning opportunities it could provide my future students. When I entered
the classroom and met my first junior high students, I could hardly
wait to get them all online and share my excitement of the magnificent
journey we would be taking in our short time together. I soon realized
that many of my students were unfamiliar with the Internet and did not
know what to think other than that their new teacher was probably a
nut! I also encountered a few less-than pro-active comments from my
peers. In their eyes, I was the red, wet-behind-the-ears teacher who
hadn't learned that my enthusiasm over the possibilities of the Internet
didn't mean my students would share the warm and fuzzy feelings with
me. They also believed I was trying to do too much in too short a time
with my students. In their eyes, the Internet was a novelty for which
they had little understanding or educational use. |
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s a new teacher, my task was large. First, I had to gradually get my
students used to searching the World Wide Web and teach them how to
find the information they were looking for. I relied on my "tech-smart"
kids to help the others along. My second challenge was convincing my
peers that technology didn't have to be intimidating and did, indeed,
have a place in the classroom. I was lucky enough to find two excellent
mentor teachers, both committed to providing opportunities for engaged
learning and interested in integrating technology into the learning
environment. They had glimpsed the horizon and were willing to forge
ahead. None of us were truly certain as to what results we would obtain
by utilizing the Internet as a teaching and learning resource. We recognized
the numerous global opportunities for collaboration and mentoring created
by project-based online sites and were willing to take the risk of allowing
our students to step outside the traditional box and into a new virtual
world of learning. |
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Stepping outside of the Box! Each school year, most science teachers begin the year by teaching the scientific method. Rather than lecturing to my students on how to develop a research question, formulate a hypothesis, and concoct a research protocol, my ninth grade biology students learned the scientific method by doing science! By becoming engaged in active investigations, students found it a less difficult task to develop research questions. The problem became one of narrowing down the questions each group would study! We journeyed to http://kancrn.org, the Kansas Collaborative Research project, where we found eight online projects for bio-monitoring the immediate environment. Each of the online projects provided our class with background information and research protocols, as well as a forum to ask questions of expert researchers if we needed a little help along the way. According to our local district curriculum guide, global ecology was our first objective to meet. We accomplished this by studying the effects of ultra-violet radiation on yeast cells. The strain of yeast we studied had been genetically altered and was missing the gene allowing the repair of any damage due to ultra-violet radiation exposure. Using the yeast was cheap for a limited budget and also provided the ideal opportunity for curriculum spiraling when we arrived at our spring unit on genetics. In the late spring months when most students' thoughts drift to summer vacation, my students were able to recall our experiences with the genetically mutated yeast cells and tie global ecology and genetics together in a meaningful manner. Students learned how to perform serial dilutions to achieve the right concentration of yeast cells; they also learned how to "plate out" the yeast onto agar gels while using aseptic techniques (something I had not learned until I encountered microbiology my junior year of college). Once the yeast was properly plated onto agar, the plates were carried outside and exposed at various time intervals to the Kansas sun. My students were active researchers in the field. One student ventured to ask: "Is THIS how real scientists 'do science'?" Yes, indeed it was! I witnessed an improvement in student attitude, as this special group of ninth graders no longer dragged their feet into the classroom each day. Instead, we actually had to stop everyone from working at the beginning of each class period in order to go over the daily tasks. Intrinsic motivation began to change as they took an active role and ownership in their learning environment. Each day meant a short 52-minute period to devise a course of study, finish up on a previous experiment, write up results, or discuss problems or confusions with peers and online mentors. This supported excellent student-centered discussions. Topics ranged from questioning and researching similarities between yeast DNA and our own DNA, as well as spin-off research projects by groups of students interested in investigating the affects of prolonged UV-radiation exposure to organisms other than our friendly yeast. |
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"I witnessed an improvement in student attitude, as this special group of ninth graders
no longer dragged their feet into the classroom each day." |
Where to begin? By the second week of school, students were able to access the KanCRN Web site via the World Wide Web and obtain background information and protocols for carrying out their investigations. Students were required to keep standard laboratory notebooks in which they recorded their research questions, hypotheses, experimental procedures, data results, and conclusive discussions. After obtaining Web site information for our activity, we pulled together as a class and refined the procedures to fit our classroom needs and available resources. I would put the daily tasks on the white board as students would begin working in investigative teams setting up their lab notebooks for the upcoming project activity. (Students were required to work as individuals when developing the final investigative report). Once armed with the information needed to begin their hands-on research, students began carrying out experiments, collecting and recording results in the classroom, and finally, submitting them back to the Web site database. Once their results were submitted to the KanCRN project site, my students could take a look at what other students had found through similar investigations all around the world. The online discussion forum enabled students to e-mail questions to other students, teachers, and expert mentors participating in the collaborative project. As I would visit the Project Forum in my own time, I began to notice the names of individual students who had contacted the Project Mentors from their Internet access at home. One student was bold enough to suggest the EPA method of evaluating data was inaccurate for project use. This was the natural lead-in for a classroom spin-off research project. Students began peer-group conferencing as they jumped into investigating spin-offs of the question: "What would be a more accurate method of evaluating environmental damage near our school?" Numerous student projects resulted from one student's question. Encouraging feedback from other students and teachers participating in the KanCRN Project Forum motivated my students to pursue a conclusion. |
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both the teacher and students, this rich learning experience was phenomenal.
I can't even begin to describe the feelings I experienced while watching
my students initiate their own discussions with peers, teachers, and
online mentors regarding other projects they could investigate and on
which post results back to the Web. I began to feel less and less like
the biology "expert" and more like the class cruise director on board
to facilitate the daily activities. Occasionally, we had to focus on
steering our investigations to align with meaningful content. After
all, I did have to follow the curriculum guide. Once I found online
resources to support the content I planned to teach, the rest was a
breeze. Half of the battle was over. Students were now familiar with
the project-based environment and supporting technology. The structure
was in place to move ahead and implement future project-based learning
experiences. |
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Outcomes: Student scientists working in a hands-on, investigative environment was the outcome of the Kansas Collaborative Research project. Students gained from this project in that science is no longer a subject that many of them will shy away from. They've participated in a strategy for learning that they may rely on no matter where they are or what they are doing in life. As a teacher, I gained inspiration as I watched my students become engaged in learning. I am also continuously rewarded by e-mail from former students stating that they are still able to relate the content we studied in ninth-grade biology to new information they encounter. |
 mplementing
this project was by no means easy, but the rewards were great
enough to justify the time spent in preparation. What I learned is that
project-based integration became difficult, only when I began to lose
sight of the intended outcomes. I found the most success from constant
reflection and evaluation both on my part and with the class as a whole.
We constantly took learning breaks for short class meetings. The questions
we'd address were: (1) What are you learning? (2) In what other directions
could you take your research? and (3) What difficulties are you experiencing,
or what could your team do differently? We created a peer-support system
within the classroom that allowed students to work on teams with constant
peer review and reflection. This also made them less self-conscious
when presenting their final project reports. What was most important
was that students learned the content and the questioning to support
their continued learning.The project-based environment with the additional support of Internet technologies supported this goal of continued questioning and learning. From the experience I've described, it becomes clear that technology was never the novelty. The focus always remained on the content at hand. Technology, in our case, was merely the resource supporting our classroom investigations. At the end of our project experience we held a terrific "Celebration of Knowledge," (a.k.a. authentic assessment). Without online resources like the Kansas Collaborative Research project, our classroom celebration would never have been quite the same. |
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Check out Christy's favorite sites!
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Top three educational sites:
AT&T's Learning Network.
AT&T's program to link families, teachers, and schools to the technologies
they need to improve education. 
From Now On. Information and Research behind project-based learning and
teaching with technology. 
The Kansas Collaborative Research Network.
An open community of students, educators, and researchers interested
in undertaking collaborative, Internet-based research and learning projects.
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