As students were struggling to make sense of the story, the teacher’s recommendation was indeed very helpful. It helped them focus their attention on what was important and look at alternative views their peers came up with. However, they still had difficulty seeing the big picture – how characters relate to each other, how they influenced the flow of events, what type of an impact the story had on history or vice versa. The ability to visualize how all these components relate and influence each other would be difficult for an adult, not to mention a child, especially if traditional resources are all the child can use. Students can use different computer applications to address different parts of the assignment, but none allows them to put it all together in a manner that will help them see the entire picture, like pieces in a puzzle.

PersonalBrain is an application that does just that and much more. It is a visual content management solution and an associative information organization system. It is what we call a mind-mapping solution that allows its users to branch out their ideas or thoughts in a visual diagram. Any piece of information or “thought” can be linked to any other piece, creating structures of information that reflect the way users think about the information. Mapped and linked ideas help users follow a train of thought, flowing from one item to the next. What makes PersonalBrain so unique is that it is a dynamic mind-mapping tool that allows users to keep track of the big picture even as they go on into execution phase and attach supporting documentation created with other applications. The beauty of this is that there is no divorce between the conceptual phase and the execution phase and users can see the big picture while they are busy working on the detail. Users can attach spreadsheets, documents, website resources, animations, simulations, or any other type of file that makes their nodes come to life and contribute to a detailed, well rounded picture of the users’ thinking, thus making it easier for others to understand.

If the same classroom had access to PersonalBrain, they could immediately lay out a visual diagram of the story’s main framework. They could start with the project planning phase which includes assignments, observations, questions, and resources and follow with a detailed analysis of the scenes, stakeholders, plots, and viewpoints. A student would not be able to plan, design and execute it all with PersonalBrain. Execution would require them to use different applications. However, students will be able to see how all project parts tie in together and fit into a larger context. As they work on the details, they can discover new relationships and record them in their PersonalBrain diagrams. Project parts created with other applications can be attached to their respective nodes, linking the details into the project’s conceptual view. Students can move in and out between the big picture and a detailed view of the project, never loosing track of the relative location of data they explore in the larger scheme of things.

According to David H. Jonassen, meaningful learning happens when learning tasks are situated in some meaningful real world task and students are led to recognize that the world is not a reliable and simple place and ideas rely on the context they occur in for meaning. PersonalBrain facilitates this type of learning by requiring learners to analyze the underlying structure of the ideas they are learning, while they are trying to link them to their own knowledge structures.

Bibliography:

1. David Jonassen, Learning to solve problems with technology : a constructivist perspective, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River N.J.: Merrill, 2003).
2. “Smithsonian Education – Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us,” http://smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/telling_stories/index.html.
3. “TheBrain.com – Welcome to TheBrain,” http://www.thebrain.com/.

You can interact with this mind map by clicking on its nodes and whenever a document is attached to a node, you can view it by clicking on the bottom of the mind map.

A Model Project with an Assignment List

A Model Project with a Task Assignment Sheet

A typical project in a planned project-based environment may begin in different ways. How to begin depends on students’ grade level, their experience with project-based learning, and to what extent the teacher is ready to delegate responsibility to the student. Task assignments may be the first thing students decide on or it may come after the driving question, if students are the ones developing it. The decision to engage elementary students in project-based learning and train them to take charge of the process is quite demanding and most teachers don’t have the necessary time to make it happen. Therefore, teachers in my school prefer to assign the driving question, provide clear project specifications and assign specific roles to each team member in the group. This does not warrant that task assignments are predetermined by the teacher. Each member’s task is wide enough to break it down to clear steps and deadlines. Students engage in task assignments after they understand the assignment well enough and have a chance to generally overview the subject.

The process of task assignments follows the students’ analysis of the role they assume. Based on their understanding of the role, they devise a set of steps and deadlines to perform it. Team work facilitates peer review, helping each member refine their task assignments. They also need to learn to synchronize their tasks, if task precedence is important for project completion. The tool that enables all this consists of a ‘Task Assignment Sheet’ and an ‘Assignment List,’ both part of a Google Site Projects Template created by me. The following section describes how to create a ‘Task Assignment Sheet’ by breaking the task into the necessary steps and components that are needed for students to be able to use it and collaborate. It is very important that you perform these steps in the order they are listed. Otherwise, you may have problems with sharing the information correctly with all team members.

Click Here to Download Instructions
How to Create A Task Assignment Sheet

I have been a long- time advocate of project-based learning because I believe that it encourages students to become independent self-driven learners. I employed my basic understanding of project-based learning to help my students use this approach in their work. However, I always felt the lack of a systematic approach that other teachers and I could refer to when guiding students to use it. When I stumbled upon the book “Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms,” I knew that the book was a serious contribution to creating a systematic approach to handle project-based learning in science. The authors -Krajcik, Czerniak, and Berger – have laid out a detailed formula for implementing project-based learning in science that any teacher seriously attempting to use it can rely upon. The book is filled with practical descriptions of procedures and forms necessary to cover the entire process: formulating the driving question, developing scientific investigations, using technology, developing collaboration, developing benchmark lessons, developing proper assessments, planning a project-based curriculum, and setting up the classroom for project-based learning. However, the book’s focus on science made me look for additional sources that had a more universal approach, such as the excellent and exhaustive Buck Institute’s Project Based Learning source.

After reading all these excellent materials, I was able to formulate a methodical approach to project based learning that I was eager to apply with my students. A combination of this methodical approach with the benefits that Web 2.0 technology affords, started making a lot of sense. Web-based applications such as Google Apps hold the promise of student collaboration, making it an ideal platform for project-based learning. As an avid user of Google Apps and other Web 2.0 applications, I started toying with the idea of implementing a project-based framework using Web 2.0 tools. I created a template with Google Sites that serves as a project-based guide for students to follow. The building blocks of this template vary depending on the subject that the project is focused on, but it has a few generic components that are likely to show up in any project. A typical project template may include a “Team Task Sheet” for planning each members’ roles and responsibilities in the project, an “Observation Form” for encouraging students to record and share their live or text-based observations, a “Questions Form” for recording and sharing questions that may lead to a driving question, and a “Research” section which displays the bibliography of the sources students consult.

A Project about The Pearl's Escape using Google Sites

I have created a sample project based on the Smithsonian Institute’s “Once Upon a Real Time: Telling the Stories the Past Tells Us.” The project is classified as a historical story and tells “The Story of an Escape: Flight on the Pearl.” Based on this story, I created a template that has the above mentioned building blocks, as well as specific sections that stem from the project’s topic–telling a historical story.

In the next few blog entries I will focus on each component of this template separately. Starting with the “Project Task Sheet” designed to help students describe their tasks in the project, followed by a student generated list of bibliographic resources and how to include them in the site, promote brainstorming by recording and sharing observations with the “Observations” form and use the “Questions” form to focus the discussion towards a definition of a driving question. Each component will be described for its educational value, how it serves project-based learning, how to approach each task and tailor it for your own needs. A live demonstration of templates in action will be available towards the end of this academic year when my 5th grade students’ template-based projects will be displayed on our Balboa Magnet school website.

Bibliography: