PBL: pushing students to their limits

This last week has been so much fun for me. I’ve had the pleasure of watching as my Year 10 students problem-solve as part of our ‘Can Cyborgs Write Poetry?’ project. I’ve blogged about this project before, so I won’t repeat what it’s about. If you’re interested just search ‘cyborg’ in the search box up top. Anyway, last week I was treated to a class poetry reading where every student sat in the ‘Poet Chair’ and read their poems to us all. One students waited until the very end … he didn’t offer to read his. All his peers where like ‘Hey, Adam hasn’t read his!’ Adam just gave me a sheepish look and we put on the projector to show the class his poem. He’d already completed part two of the project – a visual representation of his cyborg poem to be uploaded to YouTube. It was so cool to show his peers that he had finished it first, oh – and the film was DAMN good!

I was excited about Adam’s video because he had taken the initiative to complete his film without any teacher input or guidance. He chose his genre – machinima – as an individual. I don’t know how to play Call of Duty and certainly wouldn’t know how to make a film from it. Adam worked it all out himself – completely self-directed learning! He selected a form he was passionate about – video games – and used it to ensure his success. I shared his video via twitter and as a result he got over 100 views and 10 comments in one night! One of the comments was asking if his video could be used by a Scottish educator in his presentations on pop culture being used in the classroom. Pretty neat for a Year 10 ‘assignment’, huh?

So now a week has passed and the rest of the class are submitting their cyborg videos. There has been such a funny response to this task. It has pushed them to their limits. Many of them have been frustrated using the technology, having never made films independently before. I know it seems un-teacher-like to throw kids a task and refuse to teach the skills needed for success in that task. But the point of task like this is to encourage students to be resilient, to persist, to think creatively and critically, to be resourceful and to experience success in learning something new – even if the film isn’t the success they hoped. These students are Extension English students – the thing they need to experience most is failure. One student commented that this was ‘the hardest assignment ever’ and another told me ‘don’t set another film because this was soooo hard’. But they need to feel challenged and to discover that learning is in the process, not the product and certainly not in a grade – I’m not giving grades.

Here are the films that have been submitted so far. I am delighted by each one of them. Poems are all original works also. I am giddy that these films will be shown to pre-service teachers in Perth thanks to Greg Thompson at Murdoch University. I hope you love them too!