| What is most important to the students is to be able to develop an idea that they have ownership over; one that has been developed through their interests and can be changed at their discretion. Technology is only relevant to them as it allows the students to accomplish their goals. As facilitators of this process, we encourage change and exploration. During construction time students often are heard saying, "What if..... We could....... I wonder......" Following those questions you would hear one of us saying, " Why not? Sure you could. Try it out." You would also hear students asking us how to accomplish a particular task. We seldom give a direct answer. Usually we ask a question. Sometimes we even shrug our shoulders. |
| To us the most important goal is the process of exploration, experimentation, and explanation. At the Museum Magnet School, these three steps are used to create an exhibit, the documentation of the students’ learning. We find that when students are asked to record their thoughts along with the results of their experiments, they are able to use themselves as resources for further study. They also have created for themselves a narrative that becomes the rough draft for their exhibit. Documentation allows the students to reflect upon their thinking and provides a storage of information that can be used to develop new ideas. |
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Students are able to work on their ideas over several months during the school year. We want students to understand what they are doing, be able to use it for themselves, and explain it to others. Students are introduced to materials that they have indicated readiness for. The students in the Building Stories with Lego section had very little experience with building and no experience with motors or with computer programming. They began with a Lego kit and patterns to build their machines. Learning to write a program became necessary when they wrote stories requiring their machines to operate specific to the actions in the script. Now they are designing their own machines to tell new stories, collaborating to include more characters. |
| Student puppeteers participated in previous puppet theater presentations at the Museum School. They had experience with many types of puppets. They were intrigued with the idea of puppets operating by themselves. The students also had programming experience with crickets and had designed machines using motors and sensors. They experimented with many of the skills that they had acquired while developing their earlier projects to construct and program their new puppets. Creating a ‘real’ theater experience was the driving force behind the students’ work. The creation of the machines to move the puppets was of secondary importance to the students. |
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A dozen students were introduced to Real World MicroWorlds, which uses a cricket to record a change from a sensor (light or temperature, for example), then report the change to the computer. (We would like to thank Michael Smith-Welch for sharing this idea with us.) When the changes occur, the screen graphics are altered. The students charged ahead developing ideas for making their screens change. The spirographs that were used to introduce the use of sensors were quickly abandoned for loftier animations. The creation of the animation drove the students. Task commitment was high. They had stories that they wanted told. The sensors were forgotten for a long period of time. As some of the animated stories reached completion the sensors were revisited and used to trigger changes in the stories. Some of the students, after six months are continuing to write programs to embellish and extend their animations. The technology again, is valuable as it allows the students to use it for their own purposes. |
| "We are going to be doing a research project class...." You can hear the moaning from three doors down the hallway, past the office, and on the way to the cafeteria. Students have visions of laboriously reading through as many books as they can find along with all the pages they have printed off the internet before trying to put the information into their own words. Then someone, just having read the student papers, had the nerve to be overheard saying, "You know, this isn’t real research." |
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School From the Perspective of a Mouse and Rondo Neighborhood projects both started with a question posed by the students. The first was expressed with a hint of disbelief and amazement, "There are mice here? Really? I’ve never seen any, have you?" Have you?, turned into a survey to discover whether or not there were mice in the building, where they hung out, and how they survived. Interviews were conducted by the students to gather more data. The students analyzed their information and published the results in the school newspaper. But to make their results interesting to kids they decided to produce a movie. They did a little reading and web searching. They used all their data and some of their reading to write the script for Mouse House. The research portion of the project took 60% of the project time. |
| Leah was intrigued with the renovation of a row house located two blocks from our school. It is obviously old and had been recently renovated. She had many questions about the building and began with taking pictures of the parts that most captivated her. The research into the past life of the house continues as she uses technology to assemble her collection of photos, ideas, and facts. |
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| Unlike sampling a smorgasbord of tastes, these students have been able to immerse themselves into the ripening of their ideas, ideas told through stories using technology as tools. |
Karen Thimmesch
Morgan L’Argent
Kristen Murray |
