Tools at School: Excellent Example of PBL, Student Design and Innovation, and Enhancing Innovative Learning Environments

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Several of my great enthusiasms come together in the the video above and below from the School at Columbia and their outstanding, superb Tools-at-Schools project. Don Buckley, the School’s Director of Innovation, seems a prime driver here. For me, watching the videos is a wonderful learning experience; I was able to learn more about the design process (so crucial to innovation), visualize quality PBL in action, and at the same time gain new understanding of how school furniture can be updated to better enhance innovative learning environments.

Several elements stand out:

1. The program gives students real-world tasks connected to their own experience and relevant to their lives, tasks to which they themselves can bring their own expertise.

2. Process, process, process. This project unfolds over 8 whole months.

3. Experts play a role in every professional project, and they can and should play a role in student PBL as well: it is really exciting the way the students here have the opportunity to interact with expert furniture makers and designers.

4. This is hard work– PBL should demand of students with no apologies hard work, including significant research, analysis, and writing.

5. Forming “Big Ideas,” in good Grant Wiggins fashion, guides the thinking and keeps a focus on the goals.

A big idea is thus a way of seeing better and working smarter, not just a vague notion or another piece of knowledge. It is more like a lens for looking than another object seen; more like a theme than the details of a narrative; more like an active strategy in your favorite sport or reading than a specific skill. It is a theory, not a detail. If an idea is “big” it helps us make sense of things.

6. Producing a product shapes the journey and provides a motivating destination.

The project received some nice press as well, written up on the Huffington Post:

The program, called “Tools at Schools,” is an example of what Buckley calls “Education 3.0.” In this imagining, Education 1.0 is the traditional model, where a teacher stands at the front of the class and teaches at the students. In Education 2.0, the teacher and students hold a conversation together. In Education 3.0, the outside world (a design firm, perhaps) is brought into the classroom.

“If we’re serious about putting kids out into the 21st century workplace, this is the stuff they need,” Buckley said.

and shown on NBC news:

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The five videos below take viewers through the five steps of the process following the top introductory stage: Research, Mockup, 3D, Modeling, Launch. Enjoy and Learn:

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