Teachers playing with our project, "The Cooperative Etch-A-Sketch", at Constructing Modern Knowledge 2016.

CMK is a week of learning created specifically for teachers who want to gain some first-hand experience of what it feels like to work in a collaborative student-led project-based-learning environment. The annual event is organized by Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez, authors of Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. It took place last week and I learned so much by putting the student hat on and attending.

After being a student for a week I learned:

Group projects are never really about making an object. They’re about relationships and learning to work with people.
Transitions from one subject to another, at the end of a class period, are hard for students. They interrupt the learning and create stress because of it.
It is compelling to help someone else realize their vision for a project.
The resources available on the internet allow students to learn what they need on their own, if only they know where to look for them.
Coaches engaged in working on their own projects help inspire life-long learning by students.
Document the answer to each question you have as you find it (photos are great.)
Celebrate with your team each successful step forward because they are sometimes far and few between. Celebrating helps to keep the team working together.
Verbalizing your knowledge is a good way to know that you understand it clearly.
Sometimes it is more effective for each team member to make individual contributions to a project as specialists rather than asking everyone to learn everything.
Do your own reflecting, even if your facilitator doesn’t ask you to. It’s worth it!

I took some videos of various conference attendees trying our creation, here, and wrote a more detailed account about my 5 day experience, here.

Sue Fisher, EurekaLab Coach