The iCS project provided a great opportunity to develop a working PBL framework for implementing computational thinking across plugged and unplugged technology.  Working for the last 2 1/2 years as the PBL in Design Thinking Coach from CREATOMbuilder, with the 3rd-5th grade Centennial Academy team, CEISMC and GSU,  the pilot project supported the entire school in leveraging computer technology across all grades and across all curriculum.  

Excited to hear your iCS grant experience.

Kathy Fritz

Leveraging computer technology is a huge concern for society and schools today. The students in your video say it all! Specifically, how is access leveraged? Do the students 'own' the technology? Do they have access at home, too? I am also wondering who designed the projects that are being used for the student learning... I love the quote, "Teachers are giving up control."                   

Thank you, Meghan. So important to support the teachers with the technology, too!

Where do the PBL project ideas come from? Do these teachers follow a curriculum or design the tasks on their own?

Yes - interested to hear about where the projects come from and also if there are established criteria for what counts as a 'PBL'. We found with after school facilitators that we worked with that there was a set of expectations about what a PBL was that was communicated from 'above' but it was not aligned with what we were thinking about supporting in our PD efforts, and thus it took us awhile to figure this out and then to come to some consensus about what  a PBL in the after school setting could look like. There was a lot of stress about student choice and voice that 0 at first - left facilitators feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Interested to hear if any of your experiences were similar.  

I really love this topic and approach, and have some of the same questions as above.  It seems to me that combining technology and PBL is both a perfect combination of tools and problem solving practice, and at the same time poses two potential barriers for teachers; supervising the use of technology, and facilitating PBL pedagogical practice, a divergence from traditionally enculturated methods.  

You mentioned learning a lot about how teachers and schools move toward full implementation, and I would love to hear some of your learnings that might inform other efforts to support change in this general direction.  Thanks in advance for any thoughts you can share.

Hi Michael,

Here are a few learnings from my experience with the project:

1. It is a slow process that never ends.
2. School-wide implementation of PBL and CT helps move it from an isolated project to a classroom norm.
3. The school leaders play a very important role in the transformation process.

I love that you included the students' voices in your video!

Can you say a bit more about how your teachers assess students learning of computational thinking specifically? 

When developing the PBL project, teachers intentionally plan using content standards as the core and then layer in the ISTE Standards and Computational Thinking vocabulary (data collection, problem decomposition, etc.).  As they develop the learning guide (specific lessons) around the content, teachers teach and make direct connections with the practices that are occurring in the learning cycle with the direct link to the ISTE standard and/or CT action they are completing.  Initially the ISTE and CT are learned in very formative methods (for the learning).   As the scholars learn the content the scholars begin to naturally develop their language and identification around their actions as it relates to the ISTE and CT.  It is quite impressive to see scholars make this transition.

Could you please say more about the teacher observation tool? ICOT?