Problematic:

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all." This quote by Paul Simon from his song Kodachrome typifies many peoples’ memories of what they learned in high school.  I have been a teacher of high school students for 20 years. I want my students to remember their high school years differently.  While students are enrolled in my class I want them to be curious and interested, excited about learning and motivated to discover. I want their memories to be more like – "I learned so much in the computer course I took in ninth grade – I learned to use the computer, but I also learned a lot about myself and how to think." How do I set up the conditions for this reaction in my class? This is my problematic situation – that which John Dewey calls "The indeterminate situation."
 
 

"Almost everyone has had occasion to look back upon his school days and wonder what has become of the knowledge he was supposed to have amassed during his years of schooling, and why it is that the technical skills he acquired have to be learned over again in changed form in order to stand him in good stead.  Indeed, he is lucky who does not find that in order to make progress, in order to go ahead intellectually, he does not have to unlearn much of what he learned in school.  These questions cannot be disposed of by saying that the subjects were not actually learned, for they were learned at least sufficiently to enable a pupil to pass examinations in them.  One trouble is that the subject-matter in question was learned in isolation; it was put, as it were, in a water-tight compartment.  When the question is asked, then what has become of it, where has it gone to, the right answer is that it is still there in the special compartment in which it was originally stowed away.  If exactly the same conditions recurred as those under which it was acquired, it would also recur and be available.  But it was segregated when it was acquired and hence is so disconnected from the rest of experience that it is not available under the actual conditions of life."

I am a teacher at Caravel Academy, a private k-12 school in Bear, DE.  I teach computer applications and computer programming courses to students in grades 9 to 12.  I am focusing on my Introduction to Computers class.  It is the required course in computers for graduation at Caravel.  Most students take this class in ninth grade.  It is a half-credit course, offered three days per week, taken all year. The curriculum has goals set for word processing use, spreadsheet use, Internet searching, evaluation of Internet sources, presentation software use, and creation of world wide web pages. I would like to use project based learning ideas to craft authentic projects for students to complete as we learn through the year.  These projects need to be structured so as to demand that students develop higher order thinking skills, an increased sense of themselves, and an emphasis on using technology as a tool.
 

The Learning Curve

I. Learning Theory

John Dewey:  Experience and Education
 

"I assume that amid all the uncertainties there is one permanent frame of reference: namely, the organic connection between education and personal experience "

"Everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had.  The quality of any experience has two aspects.  There is an immediate aspect of agreeableness or disagreeableness, and there is its influence upon later experiences."

Agreeableness

". . . democratic social arrangements promote a better quality of human experience, one which is more widely accessible and enjoyed, than do non-democratic and anti-democratic forms of social life."

"We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything."
 

Influence upon later experiences:

"Every experience influences in some degree the objective conditions under which further experiences are had."

"Every experience is a moving force.  Its value can be judged only on the ground of what it moves toward and into."

"Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas."

"It thus becomes the office of the educator to select those things within the range of existing experience that have the promise of potentially of presenting new problems which by stimulating new ways of observation and judgment will expand the area of further experience."
 

Implications:

"A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth.  Above all they should know how to utilize the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worth while."

"An experience is always what it is because of a transaction taking place between an individual and what at the time constitutes his environment, whether the latter consists of persons. . . the subject talked about . . . toys . . . books. . . or the materials of an experiment. . ."

"Collateral leaning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned."

"The most important attitude that can be formed is that of a desire to go on learning."
 

Constructivist approach

II. Curriculum
        Current Curriculum for Introduction to Computers

III. Instruction (new material -- final presentation)

    Project Designs for  Introduction to Computers

     In designing the four projects at the above link I have tried to keep Dewey's theories in mind to develop tasks that will promote growth on two levels -- technology skills and personal knowledge of one's self and goals. Before students attempt these larger projects, students will have learned to use the software by completing a number of small assignments designed to help the student move from familiarity to mastery, from dependence (on instruction) to independence.  After students learn to use the word processor they will learn to use the Internet so that they can use it as a resource for the next three projects. 

IV. Assessment

    How to measure success --
        Reflective journals
        Lab use during activity period and after school
        Quality of products