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We often make the mistake, as educators, of going to community and industry partners with our hands out. We ask, "What can industry do for my students? How can industry help" It wasn't until I was talking with a team member at an Adobe field trip that I realized that I tend to swap that request around. My first question, whenever I meet anyone in industry is, "How can my students help you with your business?"  It was in the asking of that question, with a team of people from Adobe who happened to be touring my school, that I began what has been a powerful relationship with their company. It turns out that Adobe often wants the feedback of students on product that is in development. They want students who can speak up, are not afraid to offer clear opinions, that are interested in making beautiful images with their products, that understand the basics of project management, and who are generally mature enough to work with a team of adults to communicate clearly what they want and don't want.  To that end, a group of my students were invited to come visit Adobe Headquarters this week, to work with a team of researchers and developers on product. Students got to show the team how they use the product, discuss what they like and don't like, review marketing preferences, and answer a whole host of questions. To some students, it would be intimidating to meet with 15 adults and to be put on the hot seat, but because we concentrate on building collaboration, and oral and written communication skills at New Tech High, these students were up to the task.
After having a great working session with the crew and speaking with their research folks, we has an incredibly powerful career panel, where a small team of people with varied job titles at Adobe, spoke to the students about their path from high school to Adobe. They talked about their trials and tribulations, as well as where they chose to pivot to pursue their interests instead of staying on whatever path they thought they were supposed to pursue. The general message was one of supporting students to think about following their bliss, considering design your own majors or double majoring in seemingly disparate subjects, or choosing minors that support their creative passions.  The entire trips was eye opening for all the students. They were super grateful to have the time and the special connections they made with folks at Adobe. Surprisingly, the Adobe folks were also super grateful to have the students there. I think that in making industry partners, the relationship has to go both ways. We can not just take, take, take, but also offer added value to our partners, such that we help companies in some way, by offering insight into a demographic they don't normally hear from, or by creating great product that can help companies in their endeavors. What an incredible day. I know it has helped my students gain confidence, gain more clarity about what their next steps are in college and beyond, and it's opened doors for them that would not normally be open. I hope all teachers are on the lookout for ways to partner with industry. Just remember, ask not what your industry partner can do for you, but what you can do for your industry partner!
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What I learned
Aha Moment At New Tech, teachers are always scratching our heads as to why projects always seem to take way longer than we expected. Now I get it. Collaboration and creativity takes time. I have a much better sense of why students look like they are goofing off and are not using their class time wisely. It is so tempting to just talk the time away. If it's hard for adults, under a deadline to stay focused, it must be doubly hard for teenagers, where the importance of being social is so key to developmental growth. Strategies for Staying FocusedInterested in learning about how to stay focused? Here are a few related blog posts with great strategies:
www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-ways-to-stay-focused-on-the-task-at-hand/ http://www.wikihow.com/Stay-Focused https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/teaching-students-to-stay-focused/  This week's homework for my graduate work in Innovative Learning was to be about Darling-Hammond's book "The Flat World of Education" but this week turned out to be very different for me. We were also given the assignment of checking out two collaborative online apps, Voicethread and Wevideo. After a first look from all my team members, we decided that we wanted to find something more engaging and fun for the classroom. Researching new apps is both time-consuming and sometimes frustrating, if you are looking for free apps, however, there are many great apps that have a Freemium model where you get SOME of the functionality for free and if you like it, you ask Administration to pay for the premium version. What I vaguely remember from a Google summit, was the mention of Google apps for education, also known as GAFE. Yesterday my teammates, Julie, Gary and I went searching around to see what was up. What we found was a plethora of choices that can help with online collaboration. Here's the link if you want to explore. Once you download the app, or what looks like a plug-in or extension, you can then access your app, either through the apps website, or through creating a new document in google drive.  We chose the bottom app show above, Powtoon, which is an app that allows you to create your own cartoon animations. It has a collaborative function that you can get after you pay for the premium version, so we simply video conferenced, shared a screen and one person drove the app while everyone else contributed ideas and direction. After we had our main script done and recorded through our Zoom/Powtoon combination, the login was shared between us so we could individually continue to work on the animations offline.  This app was tremendous fun to work on and seemed to get us more engaged than we had been with the other two suggested apps. I'm really interested to explore the other apps listed above like Metta, Movenote, and Pear Deck.
We agreed that Powoon would be a GREAT app for 4th-12thgraders. The animation we made was about Creativity and when we are done with it, I will post here. In the mean time, check out GAFE and find some great online collaboration apps and digital storytelling tools!  Thanks to Napalearns, just last year I attended a great training from Project Management International Education Foundation (PMIEF) to help teach students the fundamental skills of Project Management. This has been the year of experimenting with how to fit this curriculum into my existing Digital Media and Game Design classes. Heres what I've learned so far:  Upsides: Breaking Down the Project makes it more manageable. Project Management can greatly help students to understand what is expected of them in order to make steps toward completing complicated and larger endgoals. Students often feel paralyzed in the face of answering a really big question or starting a really big project and often will choose to socialize with their friends instead of really puzzling through what needs to be done. They are simply in overwhelm and don't know where to start, so they just don't.  Real world vocabulary prepares students for...well....the real world. A shared Project Management vocabulary helps students to interface with real-world industry experts and partners. I feel strongly that, in order to prepare students for jobs out in the real world, we ought to be using real-world words in the classroom. Instead of "benchmarks" and "assignments" we should be talking about "milestones" and "deliverables." Students need to be taught accountability techniques. It doesn't just come naturally. Project Management has some naturally built-in accountability tools and structures that support Project Based learning. It's one thing for a group to say "this week we are all going to come up with the ruleset for our new board game." It's another thing to say "Juan is in charge of the rough draft for the ruleset, Kate is in charge of proofreading, and the whole team is in charge of testing and feedback on the ruleset. Juan will be done my Wednesday. Kate will be done by Thursday, and after we all give feedback, the finished ruleset will be ready to go by the end of Friday." Then there are class check-ins built in to every class (Scrum meetings) to identify what has been done, what will be done and any impediments that might get in the way of achieving the goals. We need to continue to build these skills so that students remain accountable to each other and to the teacher in very concrete ways. Project Management can provide those accountability structures.
Having a Project Manager means someone in the group is in charge. Oftentimes, running a project by committee can be cumbersome and not very effective. Teaching students how to lead and be led is an crucial part of learning about collaboration. Having one point person makes communication with the teacher and with the team more effective and easier to manage. Providing a chance for each student to take that role pushes the more assertive students to learn to step back and defer to their project manager. Inversely, providing a chance for a less assertive student to try on a leadership role that they might not normally choose for themselves, provides a chance for growth and risk-taking within a safe structure. Downsides: Jamming more into the curriculum can take away from other lesson time. We are already hugely strapped for time when trying to complete projects and it can be a stretch to create extra time for scaffolding PM skills. I think that the course work provided by PMIEF is really thorough and concrete, providing lessons plans and curriculum for a teacher who needs that kind of support. However, in the end, following those provided lessons would be a course in and of itself and requires more time than we have in any given day. We've got to pick and choose which tools work best in a learning environment. Some Project Management tools are too ungainly and complicated for the school environment. Planning a project from beginning to end does not support continuous development and the flexibility needed in a PBL environment. Many professional project managers say that they use a combination of Waterfall (planning from beginning to end) and Agile tools (planning in 2 week cycles) and it would be great for PMIEF to create lesson plans that reflect that blended approach. In PBL, we often solve problems from a Design Thinking perspective, which requires flexible planning and management tools.
Project Management can be a buzzkill. Sometimes you have to let students just get their hands dirty first, instead of going straight to more abstract planning. Emphasizing the organizational process can suck the fun out of a hands-on project. I've found it to be more helpful to use PM tools as small mini lessons to introduce in the middle of a project rather than a constant underlying conversation that starts at the onset of a project. The Bottom Line In PBL, where we often emphasize student-led and student-run projects, one has to be OK with a little bit of chaos and productive struggle. It's a part of what engages and excites students, as well as what frustrates them and leads toward lasting learning. Laying some of the PM models on top of a project at the very beginning can take away some of that juicy productive struggle. Ultimately, AFTER they struggle and look for solutions to solve some of their organizational problems, a teacher can be ready with some PM skills that would help address some those issues. Ultimately, the best way to teach PM skills is when there is an authentic and genuine need to know that originates from the students. Only then, is it effective to swoop in with a lesson on "The Waterfall" technique or how to run a "Stand-up meeting" in an "Agile" environment. All that said, I believe that Project management should be considered an essential tool in the tool belt of any PBL teacher. It's right up there with things like conflict resolution and personality/leadership styles awareness and encompasses important skills such as time management, resource allocation and accountability. With a little tweaking and experimenting, any teacher can make PM an important part of teaching and learning in the PBL classroom.
By Grayson Capener
So something you will quickly learn at New Tech and any school you go to where you work with people, is that there are some people who have the hardest time staying focused and getting their work done on time. This is an even bigger problem when they have access to something as distracting as the intern. Because of this, I have created this segment on how to handle off-task team mates. |
AuthorLisa Gottfried is a CTE teacher with 20 years experience as CEO of her own Video and Motion Graphics Production house. She currently teaches Digital Design at New Technology High School and at Touro University in the Masters of Innovative Learning program. She loves her job and her students! Archives
January 2024
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