I do care!

Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge.

The project we proposed in class was called "I do care!" and the challenging question my students had to answer was 'What can I do to help people from my community?'

My students wanted to do this project because every year for Peace Day we usually give money to- Save the Children and this year, my sixth graders complained. They wanted to give the money to the underprivileged in their local community. They found this project closer to their reality.

The project, in this way, was framed as a meaningful problem to solve. They had to engage in a rigorous, extended process of asking questions, finding resources and applying information.

First, they had to identify problems in their community and do a gap analysis to determine the nature and severity of the problems in relation to efforts to resolve the,. To do so, they had to find the places where they could ask (schools, charities, community centers, churches, etc.). Then, they had to decide how to present the questions. Would it be through questionnaires, interviews or polls?

Once they knew the different types of problems, students had to make some important decissions about the project, such as what they were going to donate (money, food, clothes or toys) and how they were going to garner them (advertising the event using posters, Twitter, writing an article on the school newspaper or the community newspaper, etc).

After that, students and teachers had to reflect on what was learnt, the effectiveness of their inquiry and project activities, the quality of student work, obstacles and how to overcome them.

Later, students gave, received and used feedback to improve their process and the product of their work.

Finally, students made their project work public by explaining, displaying and/or presenting it to people beyond the classroom.

In order to help visualizee the project, I used a mind map. According to the definition of Wikipedia 'A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks and drawings or other concepts linked and arranged radially around a keyword or a central idea.'

There are many tools to design mind maps. Here are some of them:

-Bubbl.us
-SpiderScriber
-Mind42
-Creately
-Coggle
-Mindmeister

The online tool I chose to design the mind map of our project was Creately. It is an amazing tool to create visual organizers.

There are many advantages of using this app. The most important one is that it is free. Creately also offers options for web or desktop installation. It has many free templates with a lot of options to customize your diagrams and edit them with some colorful labels, symbols, numbers and letters. Besides, you can embed videos on your mind map, as I did.

As disadvantages, I would say that is not very easy to use (it takes a while until you learn how to use it). This app cannot be used in your mobile phone and real-time collaboration features seems to slow down the application a bit.

In spite of these disadvantages, I am sure I will use Creately more than once! I found it really useful to present the project to my students. They were very engage with the project and had the ideas clear.

Here you can see the mind map of our project. I hope you find this post useful. If you liked it, don't forget to follow my blog!