What a sense of pride I feel today! Not of myself, but of the teachers and students involved in the Classrooms for the Future initiative here at WHS! I’ve spent the last 2 days visiting the 13 teachers and classrooms who have been the lucky ones to have a computer cart with 30 macbooks on them. Talk about meaningful and project-based learning! Here’s a taste of what I saw…

• Students in a Chemistry class working on a teacher-created webquest that included at least 8 different websites complete with video clips, flash animations, text explanations, interactive questions and more. The students worked alone on the webquest but were not discouraged from collaborating and communicating with their peers when they needed help.
• Students in two English classes creating Podcasts, iMovies, and Comic Life projects based on the novel “The Motorcycle Diaries” in which they were to take an aspect of the novel or Che Guevara’s life, synthesize their information and create a project in groups of 1-3 to share with their peers.
• Students in a Math remediation class working online, at their own pace, on Math problems to get them ready for this year’s PSSA test.
• Students in a Political Science class learn about the Supreme Court by taking on the persona of one of the justices, learning about his/her stance on the issues and having to rule in the name of that justice on real world cases that were tried by Supreme Court. Students had to promise not to find out the true ruling until they gave their own ruling. This was all done via research on the internet and discussion forums on the Moodle.
• Students in a gifted 9th/10th grade English/Social Studies class working on a project on “Geopolitics”. Each group of 3-4 students was given an ‘area of concern’ in the world such as employment, military, religion, deforestation, global warming, etc. They are to concentrate on a specific area of the world in which their topic is a major issue, research it, and present it to their classmates in a creative presentation of their choice: skit, poem, iMovie, PowerPoint, song, Podcast, Comic Life, etc etc – whatever they want!!
• Students in an Algebra II class using the Senteo Response System with the Smartboard to review for their Quarterly Progress Assessment next week. They saw the questions up on the board, worked them out at their desks, clicked in the answer and saw instantly if they were correct or not.
• Students in an AP Statistics class using a Java Applet on their macbooks with the teacher to look at Confidence Intervals and how they can differ depending on the numbers inputted.

And that’s just a few classes! The students were (almost) all on task, involved in the activity, and motivated by what they were doing. Their collaboration and communication was right on target and most importantly, they were DOING in class, not just sitting and listening. Three cheers for CFF!!! 🙂