A major question around the passion projects in the earlier posts are how does one assess the learning when they are all learning such different things?
The answer comes in the form of a digital portfolio, in our case, Nureva Troove.
The portfolio contains multiple aspects of studying history and for being a student. Armand and I both believe that it is not enough just to study our subject area. There is an important but subtle difference. We believe that we are to teach kids how to be good students, and good people who have skills and that we are to use our subject area to do this. More important that a physics formula or a history fact, is the ability to time manage, to communicate, to think critically and not just memorize something or believe something because the teacher or a textbook said so. We must show it is important to us, but spending time and energy on it and providing a grade value to it. Troove helps with this.
Few assignments for the kids give them a chance to do a video self-reflection. Although they have complete freedom, there are some broad guiding questions to help them along. Out of this came some very insightful comments about how students think they learn and their perception of the situation they think they find themselves. In some cases Armand was able to point out that there were times during the day that were bits of time that could be better used. Although we all need a break and lunch is important, talking with friends for 45 min rather than 1 hr at noon probably accomplishes the same mental wellness and social connections and yet provides some additional time to get some check on the to do list.
In some cases, it was eye opening to hear what kids lives were like at home. They were stressed about meeting a deadline. Although they were working hard and were excited about the project, they had to work 30 hours a week to contribute to the household income. Armand was able to encourage this student and discuss some options to negotiate a flexible deadline. Up until this point in time, that was not a typical thing that a student could do, negotiate with reason for a new deadline.
The video submissions in Troove helped to point out to some students that they were not good time managers and the number one way to decrease the stress of a large todo list was not to fret, panic and procrastinate, but rather start checking things off the list. Find some of the low hanging fruit and shorten the list. As the semester went on, I am thinking of a specific handful of kids who would say that they learned lots of history but they learned even more about how to manage time, stress and study.
Troove also had a more academic side, where students could submit aspects of their passion project and comment on them. They could do a self evaluation against a rubric. In particular, students gave them selves a low mark on the “wow factor”, often confusing flashy but superficial with depth. They did not equate multiple conversations with world experts in their respective fields with something that had lights, and animation and sparkle. If I were to combine the thoughts of many students into one, it might sound something like this…”I do not have anything special in my presentation, I just had multiple emails with people all over the world who do this kind of stuff as a living and then put them together to make my own idea that could be launched Canada wide.”
Some fantastic learning, but how do you put this on a test. Maybe a test mark is not the important thing.
