This whole Emergency Distance Learning thing sucks right?
I've been fortunate to be involved in one thing that's gone reasonably well. #OntEd #STEMeducation

The @ISTEM_HDSB students have been involved in PBL all year long.
They've done cool work with @McMasterEng and @cityburlington.

After March Break, students were supposed to start their own Innovation Project. Something that they'd like to focus on. Something that fills a societal or environmental need.
Obviously that plan hit a road block.

The teacher team still wanted to run with this project. But we were struggling with how to engage the students over this distance.
We were used to being able to talk to students face to face in the moment to offer meaningful feedback.

But we decided to forge ahead.
This is what we assigned to our @ISTEM_HDSB students (109 of them) once distance learning started. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DEL2myKR9nVAGQ26cN7hwMOEohUFTc7BBPh5Gh70Pmk/edit?usp=sharing

We got more than a few cool ideas! https://twitter.com/realJ_Mitchell/status/1251857679611572226?s=20

We've spent September until March teaching the students the value of rapid prototyping.
So we asked them to prototype at home with whatever materials were at hand.

We also spent our time together asking students to speak about their prototypes and present their ideas.
That's hard to do from a distance.
Or is it? Have you seen @googlejamboard?

Jamboard is an interactive, collaborative whiteboard.
Here is the most recent assignment we gave our students.

Our idea was to have all 109 students contribute to the same document.
Jamboard limits its files to 20 slides....so, pivot!

We divided the students up into smaller groups, 15 or so per group. Within each group, students were required to create their own one page prototype presentation and to leave feedback for everyone else.

Check these out!

There are many more cool ideas with well thought out prototypes.
I think an unintended consequence is that students saw others work while doing their own prototypes and have now started to alter and refine their own work.
Dare I say it...kids were engaged with this work.

It wasn't a worksheet.
It wasn't math or science curriculum.
But it was meaningful.
And it was done over a distance.

Next steps: students doing research into their projects.
What already exists?
What legal/ethical/environmental considerations do they need to think about?
How will they build it?
The teaching team of @KerrySagark @RivettHilary @SarahCu30733649 can't wait to see what they produce!