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Integrating (Technology-Infused) Project-Based Inquiry Initiatives into a Middle-Grades Science Curriculum: Essentials

Integrating (Technology-Infused) Project-Based Inquiry Initiatives into a Middle-Grades Science Curriculum: Essentials and Challenges. OR. From (Technology-Infused) Project-Based Units to (T-I) Project-Based Curriculum: Challenges and Opportunities. Project-Based Inquiry Learning.

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Integrating (Technology-Infused) Project-Based Inquiry Initiatives into a Middle-Grades Science Curriculum: Essentials

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  1. Integrating (Technology-Infused) Project-Based Inquiry Initiatives into a Middle-Grades Science Curriculum: Essentials and Challenges OR From (Technology-Infused) Project-Based Units to (T-I) Project-Based Curriculum: Challenges and Opportunities

  2. Project-Based Inquiry Learning • Investigation in the context of a personally-engaging real-world challenge • Early activities generate issues for investigation • Students design investigations and report results, multiple resources used • Results are applied to addressing the challenge • Public exhibits of solutions, methodologies, what they have learned • Investigation and application are often repeated until a good solution is achieved • Assessments are built in • Focus on processes involved in getting to solutions, not simply on solutions themselves

  3. Project challenges • Explain an interesting phenomenon • El Nino, finches dying off • Solve a problem • Helping students avoid catching each others’ colds • Debate an important policy issue • Global warming • Achieve a design challenge • Manage erosion in the schoolyard, design a vehicle • Build a scientific model • Ecology of a river • Answer a “big question” • How old is the universe?

  4. Learning Objectives • Deep learning of content • Learning of science, project, collaboration, and communication skills and practices • Learning for transfer -- can use what’s learned outside the classroom to explain, predict, solve problems, analyze the ideas of others, ...

  5. Infusing Project-Based Learning with Technology • Principle: Use hardware and software to make the goals of project-based learning more achievable • To overcome learning difficulties • To enhance activity structures and overcome classroom management, time, and other pragmatic difficulties • To enhance access to phenomena

  6. Technology examples • WorldWatcher for visualizing climate patterns • BeGuile for access to population data • Project Portfolio for keeping project records and putting together reports • Model-It for system modeling • SMILE scaffolds experiment design, writing up project experiences, and articulation of lessons learned

  7. Accomplishments • Lots of standards-based units • Lots of software -- in support of record-keeping, collaboration with each other and with scientists, model-building and simulation, designing experiments, presentation, articulation of what’s been learned, investigation in particular domains • Principles of practice -- for promoting student engagement, for facilitation, for promoting student reflection, for promoting teacher learning, for infusing software, for promoting reading with understanding, for maintaining individual accountability, ...

  8. Results • Students engage better and deeper; fewer discipline problems • Learning of content is as good or better than comparisons (and more evenly distributed) • Learning of science, project, collaboration, and communication skills and practices is really exciting

  9. From disparate units to 3 years of curriculum: Opportunities • Easier to create and maintain a culture of knowledge building, inquiry, collaboration, and rigor • Easier to integrate the sciences • Easier to draw connections between methodologies used by different scientific disciplines • Can sequence developmentally

  10. From disparate units to 3 years of curriculum: Challenges • Providing coverage -- depth vs. breadth • Addressing local needs while addressing national standards • Energy • Diversity of software • Connecting the sciences • Building skills across scientific disciplines • Sequencing • Task structures that work for different types of challenges and investigative methodologies • Helping teachers assess

  11. Format • Four speakers will each address a set of these issues -- 10 minutes each • Discussant -- Michael Young, U. Conn. -- will challenge us to think more deeply and moderate a panel discussion -- 20 minutes • Questions from the audience

  12. Four talks • Joe Krajcik, Michigan -- tensions inherent in systemic use of projects in a reform curriculum -- social and systemic • Paul Camp, GA Tech -- building skills across disciplines and their varying methodologies -- cognitive • Danny Edelson, Northwestern -- getting to task structures that will work across units -- socio-cognitive and pragmatic • Bob Sherwood, Vanderbilt -- navigating the commercial markets -- pragmatics

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