[RE]LEARN 2020 - The Learning Innovation Festival

For those participants who want more than an overview of the Authentic Project Learning Experience (APLE), we will participate in a breakout session that utilizes the Five Stages of Project Assessment and the Project ARC Learning ARC Rubric to analyze the following problem of practice: How can we design creative learning ecosystems that accelerate change in education and schooling?

A ten-minute, detailed explanation of authentic project learning experiences differs from standard project-based learning units will start the hour-long session. Case studies for review will allow for smaller group conversations with JamBoard takeaways shared to the whole group. This small-group interaction will prime participants to discuss the offered problem of practice. Finally, a modified world-café model will utilize breakout room sessions for participants to tackle the problem of practice. A minimum of two and possibly three rounds of the world café will take place, as groups are randomly assigned to breakout rooms to build on the previous room’s master list of ideas on how to solve the problem of practice. Mini-harvesting sessions will follow each café round.

Participants in this session will leave with a copy of Project ARC’s Learning ARC Rubric and Implementing a Project ARC APLE: The Process of an Authentic Project Learning Experience infographic. All participants will be encouraged to take the free Project ARC mini-courses on Canopy Lab as a follow-up to the conference conversation. Through the courses, participants will have the opportunity to develop an idea for their authentic project learning experience that they can implement in their classroom.

The last seven months of the educational instability that our systems have experienced have proved that we cannot wait for life in the classroom to return to normal. The peril that many educators have experienced is actually an opportunity for change as we move from a learning to work environment that was largely stagnant to a working to learn ecosystem that is ripe with possibilities for the future. Here, educational systems now have an open pathway to introduce creative networking opportunities to support our learners as they become the innovators of tomorrow. Implementing an authentic project learning experience in the classroom has the potential to shift the mindset of teachers and learners to one that is forward thinking and ripe with creativity rather than one that looks back to the what-ifs that teachers wonder and the what-fors that students frequently ask.