End of Year Project Topics

This is an incredibly interesting list of project ideas that my students have generated.  I thought I'd share what they're capable of when they have zero restrictions...

10-11 End of Year Project Ideas 

Some highlights if you don't feel like reading through the whole thing...

1. Mythbusters: Mac vs PC
2. Value of a Power Hitter or Contact Hitter in Fantasy Baseball
3. Developing software that is usable exclusively in an AP Stat class
4. Using a test vs. a qualitative measure to assess learning
5. Profiles of countries in a state of unrest to predict revolt (the wiki for this project)
6. Price differences between Ebay and craigslist
7. The chance of finding a 15 to 64 year old male in Luxembourg that is a noble compared to a similar-aged male in Denmark being a noble.  (easily the most unique project ever done)
8. Using Wikipedia, how long it takes for random words using the formula of always clicking the first blue, unbolded and unitalicized word, lead to the end word of Philosophy. On the theory that every word in Wikipedia will eventually lead to Philosphy. Words will be chosen via randomized dictionary words. (based on the fact that clicking the first blue, unbolded, unitalicized word of every page eventually leads to Philosophy)

With a little bit of freedom (okay, a lot of freedom) they come up with some awesome topics and they really enjoy their work in class during these couple of weeks.

How will I grade them?  By writing a list of what the student did well and what the student did not do well. 

School Reform through the Eyes of Albus Dumbledore

"No spell can reawaken the dead, Harry. I trust you know that. Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy." - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I can't help but think of this quote when it comes to education reform, so I'm going to list how things are done the right way and how things are done the easy way in various realms of education.

Implementing Change in a School District
The Easy Way: Write a policy
The Right Way: Have your buildings/staff make the necessary changes they need to help students learn

Technology Integration
The Easy Way: Buy some Smartboards and show the community our commitment to technology
The Right Way: Invest in technology that changes a teaching practice, not technology that isn't much different from an overhead projector

Community Relations
The Easy Way: Cave to whatever demands are placed upon you by the community, tell them you'll do everything they want
The Right Way: Stand up for something and explain to the community how it benefits your district, even if it means spending some money

Instruction
The Easy Way: Hand out some worksheets from a textbook manual and have students follow and copy down what you've done
The Right Way: Find out what each learner needs, and provide them with as much support for those needs as you can

School Structure
The Easy Way: Force all students to assimilate in to one model of what a school is
The Right Way: Provide students with several different options to attend school (brick and mortar, cyber, blended, etc) and have them choose which one works best for them

Grading
The Easy Way: Give points, then slowly and methodically remove them for each successive mistake a student makes. 
The Right Way: Have a list of things that a student does well, and some things they must improve upon.  Constantly revise and add to this list throughout the year.

Grading II
The Easy Way: Use a formula to calculate some type of average to summarize what a student can do.
The Right Way: Students have portfolios, that you can go through and look at to see their strengths, weaknesses, and interests. 

Personnel
The Easy Way: Make decisions based upon tenure/seniority/contract status
The Right Way: Make decisions based upon who is best for your district

No Decorations in my Classroom

I don't decorate my classroom. I've referred to it as "hospital" sterile when asked what my room looks like.  The only decorations I'd like to have in my room are signs that say: "LEARN FROM THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU".  My philosophy on this is that it shouldn't matter what's on the walls, let's start caring about what's happening inside the walls.  If it's really cool, then kids will start hanging stuff on the walls and decorating the room the way they want to.

A  few years back, I had a student that would draw pictures to hang on the wall, half of them were about AP Stat. All of them were entertaining. The ones that were about stat were amazingly good depictions of AP Stat topics.  Stay tuned for me to scan these images in and post the best of them.

I think we're in trouble if we concern ourselves too much with what the content looks like, rather imthan what the content actually is. Make that double if we use technology to change only what the content looks like.  When I choose a technology tool, I want tools that make students think deeper first, and ooh and ahh later.  This is probably why I choose Wikispaces, Google Docs, then Microsoft Excel every single time.

I recently responded to a tweet from @nwhyluckysgirl regarding using emoticons when commenting on student work electronically.  

@nwhyluckysgirl: "when commenting on student work electronically, do you use emoticons?" 

@jasonchri: "the occasional emoticon, not too often.  The comment usually is seen only for the emoticon"

My fellow tech integrator and I often debate look and feel, mostly on the look and feel of our district's technology wiki, NP Tech Tools. I keep my class wiki as the default background and format, and I honestly don't care to spend time choosing the right template/background/picture. The content of my class wiki should be the focus, and for that matter I would hope that's what's interesting about it. If you're reading this blog,  you'll see that I take a similar approach to blog layout (and have not yet switched to word press).  How are  you going to see the content if there's a thousand other things to look at on the page? 

I was inspired to write this after reading a brilliant post(Coloring Books or Canvasses? from Spencer's Scratch Pad about technology that makes students think deeply about a subject. Use tech to make students think more, not think about something else, not comment on how weird or cool something looks.  

Making the choice of what tech tool you want to use needs to be content driven.  I wind up picking one of the same three tools (Wikis, Google Docs, Microsoft Excel), since experience has shown these tools can stimulate conversation and let students think the way that they want to.

Some of my tricks...

1.  An Excel spreadsheet that is completely protected, so that they can only manipulate and change certain values to notice some patterns.  They'll need to think their way through certain processes too, not simply plug-in numbers and tell Excel to perform a calculation. 

2.  A massively shared Google document to write about the difference between two(or more) topics.  I'm trying this to get an entire class to discuss the difference between binomial and geometric distributions. 

3.  Class wiki- set of skills completely blank, so determine just how to organize lessons and what we've thought about

I'm branching out...

Forever I've wanted to use more and more multimedia ideas in my class.  Not just make a music video (a lot of times kids spend a ton of time on creating a video, and frequently miss the boat on content).  I want students to show me everything they know about probability, but do so in a very short video (30 sec - 1 min).

I'm going to suggest Animoto, but I really want to allow them to pick any tool that they should find, as long as it communicates everything they know about probability.  I also want to have them use pictures that they've taken, just to get them thinking a little bit more.  

I want to come up with the best web tools/tech tools for education, and I think this is how I want to start. Which tools make students think more, and think deeper? Which ones accomplish the same thing as a "solve for x" worksheet?  Do certain tools get misused?  Are there some tools that are all bark and no bite?