Week 10 - Giving a nudge

A lot of groups are stuck.  They don't know what the next step needs to be in order to move their projects forward.  One student was fired up about going to Venice Beach to interview street performers as well as the motley cast of characters there to find out why they do what they do.

His genuine curiosity about the characters at Venice is wonderful, but I wondered how this was going to become a year long project.  I didn't want to discourage him though.  Anaheim is 39 miles from Venice Beach.  He said he was going to get out there and do the interviews, but since he hasn't, he spends a whole lot of time doing nothing during our 20 Percent days.

In his timeline, he wasn't concrete about when he would go saying, "I'll go on a weekend in October and November."  I commented on his paper that, he needs to plan out his dates better.  We are two days away from November and he has not made his first visit.

I'm going to have him prepare all of his questions in advance and figure how he is going to approach them, ask them questions/conduct the interview, and film all of this at the same time.  Even though he hasn't been there, doesn't mean that he can't use his time wisely.

To give all the students a nudge, I've given them a progress report assignment.  On the Google Presentation I've attached at the bottom, I gave them an assignment to present for 2 minutes max what their project is, what they have done so far, and what the next step will be.

Resources
20 Percent Progress Presentation

I think that presenting what they've done so far and seeing where their peers or at might be the push they need to break through and get some real work done.

On a different note, one of the real world skills that I see that students need to develop or use is communicating with people.  One group called different organizations to see if they could volunteer, but no one answers or they don't know who to talk to get what they need.

One girl asked me to call for her.  I told her to say, "Hi, my name is ******** and I'm a student at Savanna High School.  I was calling to see if you had any volunteer opportunities for me and some of my classmates."  I also said, "If the person you talked to can't help you, ask them for the name and number of the person that can help."

This student and her group members were almost stunned because it never occurred to them what they should say when they called.

Finally, I must stress that you need to be walking around and monitoring the students as they work.  Sadly, not all students make the best use of their time, but if you get around the classroom, their less likely to wander away to inappropriate content on the Internet.

These 20 Percent Days are the most tiring as I'm helping students throughout the whole time, troubleshooting technology issues, keeping kids on task, and offering suggestions about their project.

I'll leave you with a video of an 11th grade student explaining how she was using some of her time today researching examples of how to draw characters for her RPG she and her partner are creating.