Multi-faceted Refractions

Yesterday, in my post about the lessons learned from the production of the Funky Snowman, I raised questions about how we can introduce “play” into the curriculum. I have been thinking about the last time that I felt that I was able to immerse myself within my own productivity. This occurred nearly two weeks ago on during a faculty work-day, when I was able to work on my own time free of the 45 minutes segments that a normal day brings. Also kicking around my mind are the ideas that I have gotten from reading the new Daniel Pink book, Drive. In this book, Pink spends time talking about getting into flow and how to intrinsically motivate yourself. How do we create the time and space for students and teachers to play?

Deep in my blog drafts, I pulled a post from last year, that I never finished. In this post, I began to think about the ideas put forth by Eric Langhorst in his podcast, Speaking of History. In his post from August 21, 2008, Eric talks about the problems with implementing Google’s 20% principle in his classroom, but instead talked about giving students one class period every two weeks to work on a project under the umbrella of the subject area being studied. To show their learning, students would be expected to demonstrate their learning at a fair at the end of the year.

I believe that this would be a wonderful way for teachers to begin to give up time (approximately 16 instructional days) which will allow them to still cover the content they feel that they need to while opening their curriculum up to a project based curriculum. It would be a great first step towards 21st Century Learning in a manageable non-threatening way for reluctant teachers.

A second interesting way towards getting to flow would be through the use of Fed-Ex Days, a full day experience where students would have 24 hours to complete a project. This is similar to the Film on the Fly Project, where participants were given a prompt and using their mobile phones, asked to create a 60 second movie in 24 hours. What if we had an impromptu day where all regular classes were cancelled and students were asked to solve a problem? There may be a theme, but they would be able to work individually or in groups and within 24 hours, be required to come up with solutions and plans for the solution.

While both of these solutions would have to be refined, they would provide students with a way to “play”, break out of the 45 minute discrete blocks and really get involved with a project that they were passionate about. Could these ideas begin to transform other aspects of the curriculum? Could success with projects like this show teachers the power of project based learning?

I would love to hear how others have tried to implement projects such as these.