"When I try to teach with projects, one or two people do projects and the rest just sit around"

I'm pretty stoked about the common core, it offers at least the hope that there will be a drop in content with increased focus on understanding and application over knowledge (at least from what I have seen in the sciences).  We have been talking it up at my school site and I am starting to kick the tires on PBL.  A original concern of mine is that projects tend to look a lot like this commercial with everyone quickly regressing into...well however they see them selves as students.  'Let the smart kids take over' or 'I'm a smart kid and if I don't do this thing nobody will'.  I hear this a lot when I speak with people and it's a legit concern.

I just did a pilot project (4 days) and my main goal was getting students to think critically about efficiency while learning how google docs work.  I wasn't really concerned about doing a good project, because I knew that I would lose some time to the Gdocs stuff anyway.  The project went as well as I could have hoped but my classroom still looked like this commercial.  Here is what the students said.

This kind of inconsistency drives everyone crazy, students, teachers everyone.  Its why students don't really like doing projects.  It has been my experience that most students (at first) would rather sit through lecture and get a worksheet and accept their lot in life.  Even the ones that don't like school tend to complain at first (if they are and have been operating in a culture of traditional school) about how uncomfortable doing things differently is.

My problems is that I gave them an assignment and said "have at it", without providing any direction as to who should do what...and this is a big problem that will always yield the results observed.  It is when I come across projects like this that I really see how this PBL thing can be something so much better.  I love the assignment of group work and the availability of content for each person to research.  This takes time and I went into this project knowing I wasn't going to invest in this idea right. It is nice to know the model for something better is out there.

Ultimately I have to accept that when things go like this, its my fault not theirs.  Having this attitude makes life as a teacher better (although harder) when I am aware of it, and the p power of PBL combined with digital lessons has an appeal that is worth investigating.

What is your experience or observations on the topic of how to structure group work?

Cheers.

A Message from the Office of Lessons Learned: part 1

Or...Milk was a Bad Choice.

Both titles of this post stem from two of my favorite sources of inspiration...This American Life (TAL) and Anchorman.  Anchorman (like my real life) features a hero who is taken down, only to determine what really matters,..and (as any fans of the show may know) This American Life, is a collection of radio documentaries about how interesting normal people are and tend to follow this regular plot line, "I thought one thing was going to happen, and then something else happened".

The TAL hyperlink takes you to an episode describing the ARMY Office of Lessons Learned (an actual thing!) and I was inspired to offer my own list of "Milk was a bad choice" experiences in my first semester of flipping.

More work vs the Promise of something better.

After my first unit, half my students were failing the course.  In physics the first unit is the most difficult of the entire year, if students slack off, get behind in their work they are screwed.  I expect this and the next unit is so tied to the first unit that have plenty of chances to reassess.  Lots of kids who are used to coasting and getting Bs and maybe some Cs get that first progress report and it's not pretty.  Lots of parent meetings, emails, and calls.  When I present them the idea of digital lessons in order to have the entire day for support and application, heads were nodding and students were impressed with the idea and curious to see how it would go.  Students were engaged and feedback on digital lessons was coming in fast and hot.  Everything was going great...

...at least I thought.

When it came time to do something with it, the students did what many teachers predicted they would.  Nothing.  The average amount of students who watched the lesson's at home in order were between 5 and 10 per period.  Most students were watching the lesson's in class and I was not able to apply many of the thins I planned to with the extra time.  there was no extra time, at least not like I expected.  I was free to move around the room and ask questions help students who were had moved on and were working on something.  In the end my spread of grades and performance on the final was the same as last year.  Which either says a lot about the power of digital lessons, or a lot about the inefficiency of lecture (your call).

Lesson Learned 

I did not have a strong homework culture in my class, so when prompted to watch lessons two or three nights a week in order to vastly improve their in class experience, students demonstrated the attitude of, "well  I was only doing physics at home 1 night a week before".  More work is more work, even if it means they would be guaranteed the support they need in order to avoid getting an  F.  Next year during my first unit, we will have homework every night (very low stakes 3% of grade) in order to reinforce the true nature of the flip.

Cheers.