One of my goals for my second year in the classroom is to revise some of my tactics from last year and take a more project-based approach.

In designing these projects, there are three basic concerns:

1. Does it engage students in the curriculum?
2. Does it engage students in using real-world skills?
3. Does it engage students in creating an authentic and meaningful product?

The first two are the easy ones.  The difficult part is to create a project such that the product the students make has a meaning beyond the classroom.  If the product is just going to be consumed by me, the teacher, then it’s not really authentic.  It has no purpose other than as an assignment.

Example of Utilizing Skills

I just read about a good example of using authentic skills today while reading through my RSS feeds.  Tom at Bionic Teaching shared an idea for teaching vocabulary - building CD compilations around a specific vocabulary word.

Basically, the student is assigned (or picks) one of the vocab words to be the theme of the CD.  Then, he or she chooses a series of songs that exemplify that theme.

This hits #1 and #2 on the head.  The curriculum is certainly involved (the vocabulary term) and students need to use real world skills.  They’re doing the same thing that an exec (or intern) at a record label would be doing.

An Authentic Product - Self Publishing

Last year, my students worked on a project in which they created a children’s storybook.  I had a few ideas for making the product more authentic - like sending it out as a submission to a publisher or inviting the kids from the pre-school next door to come and listen to the stories.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to it last year.

I stumbled on an incredible resource last night, which I think could be used to authenticate a lot of different products.  At Blurb, you can create and self-publish books pretty cheaply.  I searched around and another alternative is Lulu.

Both offer a variety of formats, and neither charges a set-up fee (which some other POD publishers do).  Depending on the format, the average book will cost $5 to $30.

If your students are engaged in creating some kind of book (novella, comic book, anthology, magazine, children’s book, etc), then I’m not sure what would be a more authentic process and product than actually designing the book and making it ready to publish.

How Could This Be Used In Class?

The uses for this would vary a lot, depending on the resources available in your community.

If you live in a middle class or affluent area, you could probably have the kids design the books and then asks the parents to purchase them.  The books aren’t all that expensive, and I’m sure most parents would like to see their child’s work in print.

In high poverty areas, this may be more difficult.  While $10 might not be a lot, you may have a hard time convincing parents to shell out the cash.  Instead, you could turn the project into a contest, and you would be the publisher.  Students design and pitch the books, and the best one (or two or three) are purchased, published, and saved in the classroom library.

You could shell out the cash yourself, or look for a grant to pay for it.  The dollar amount is fairly low (less than $100 to publish a handful of the books), so you may have luck with the grants.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind paying $10-20 to buy one of the books myself.

You can add a business edge to it, too, by having your students actually try to market and sell the books.  With either publisher, the books can be made publicly available for people to buy (profit margin optional).

More Later, With a Test Run

I’m not sure yet exactly how I’ll use it in my class, but I’d really like to utilize one of these publishers by years end.  I’ll figure out the logistics of it later.

In the meantime, I’m going to take one of the storybook projects from last year and create a sample book.  This will give me an idea of production/shipping time, quality, etc, and it’ll help me determine if I really want to use it in class or not.