Centropa: Connecting Project-Based Learning and Creative Teaching

1. Centropa Creative and Project Based Learning

2. Goals for Today • Define/Describe Project-Based Learning (PBL) • Show PBL’s implementation in a classroom • Demonstrate Centropa’s connections to Project-Based Learning • As an example of good teaching methodology for any subject • As a supplier of opportunities for project based-learning (Lilli Tauber - Student Films) • Demonstrate the usefulness of Centropa’s features

3. Goal #1 Describe and Define Project Based Learning

4. What do we know about this academy’s attendees? • Teachers (Multi-subject) • Organizations/Academies • Independent Educators • Museum curators and exhibition directors • Diplomats and Representatives • Authors and Scholars 

5. What goals do we share? Of all the groups and individuals here, we can find some common ground in the fact that we are all trying to….. 1) Deliver a message 2) Make sure that message is received and, more importantly, internalized. What is important for us to keep in mind as we try to achieve these goals?

6. What do we know about learning and internalization? • “All human beings possess at least eight quite separate forms of intelligence (Multiple Intelligences)”-Howard Gardner • We ought to configure education to allow two outcomes: (1) students encounter materials inways that allow them access to their content, and (2) students have the opportunity to show what they have learned, in ways that are comfortable for them yet also interpretable by the surrounding society” - Howard Gardner • Learning is not a spectator sport. We do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments and spitting out answers” -Stephen Ehrmann

7. The Learning Pyramid “You gotta know who your customers are”

8. What do we end up with… • Message carriers that desperately want their ideas to be received and internalized • Audiences that require diverse delivery methods to internalize these messages • The knowledge that learning should be engaging and interactive • An extra incentive to learn and produce good work when we know it will be displayed  5) An enormous potential for human creativity

9. Project-Based Learning • What is PBL? -The effort to allow for greater reception and internalization of messages or teaching through interactive, creative and diverse delivery methods. -Centropa modeled, and continues to model, these creative and interactive methods, and also supplies us with the tools and inspiration to create our own. Here is how……

10. Goal #2 Implementation of Project-Based Learning in a Classroom

11. Providing Options…. • In an effort to provide more options for interactive, creative and diverse delivery of the curriculum (my message) to my students this year, I decided to have them create portfolios online using Ning.com • Throughout the year, the project options they were given were virtually limitless. Some of the most chosen projects included; Holocaust films, digital video essays, songs, screencasts, podcasts, journals, radio shows, creative stories, mathematical proofs, blogs, facebook pages, websites, dances, drawings, cookbooks, sports analogies, essays, brochures. • In this same way Centropa provides all of us with various ways to receive and internalize their message • Examples of Student Work

12. Goal #3a Show Centropa’s Connection to Project-Based Learning as an Example of Good Teaching Methodology

13. Where does Centropa Fit into the methodology?  The style of the student Holocaust films was modeled after Centropa’s films.

14. Where does Centropa Fit into the methodology?  The students silent slideshows we modeled after Centropa’s use of still images to tell a story

15. Where does Centropa Fit into the methodology?  The idea for the creation of a cookbook came from the viewing of Centropa’s recipes.

16. Where does Centropa Fit into the methodology?  Just as Centropa’s Border Jumping pages ask schools to display their work, so to do the students portfolio pages.

17. Where does Centropa Fit into the methodology?  Students decided to have their viewers access some of their research and information via Facebook….just as Centropa has done.

18. Goal #3b Show Centropa’s Connection to Project Based Learning as a Content Provider

19. Where does Centropa fit into the History? • Modern World History • Changing European maps and history with Morley Safer.

20. Where does Centropa fit into the History? • Holocaust Education • Lilli Tauber and separation from family • Kristallnacht - Reading guides and stories

21. Summary Messages  Multiple Intelligences + Learning Pyramid + Need for Interactive Learning = Projects and Display for higher internalization! Centropa facilitates this for the creative messenger by providing… 1) Models/Ideas for projects (Video, Audio,Text,etc) 2) Content for these projects (Films, Guides, Stories) 3) A good example of how to deliver a message to audiences with multiple intelligences and appease the demands of the learning pyramid.

22. How Can You Use Centropa and These Ideas? • Teachers: Content for History, Literature, Languages • Organizations/Academies: Models for good messaging and instruction. • Independent Educators: Emphasis on the benefits of project-based work and displayed work. • Museum curators and exhibition directors: Varying formats for presenting your materials to visitors as well as use of Centropa’s specific content. • Diplomats and Representatives: Engaging contingents and opponents with interactive and varied deliveries of your message. • Authors and Scholars: Delivering your stories and arguments through more than written word.

23. Goals - Revisited • Define/Describe Project-Based Learning (PBL)  • Show PBL’s implementation in a classroom  • Demonstrate Centropa’s connections to Project-Based Learning • As an example of good teaching methodology for any subject  • As a supplier of opportunities for project based-learning (Lilli Tauber - Student Films) • Demonstrate the usefulness Centropa’s features a. Films, stories, photos, biographies, facebook group for sharing, border jumping for sharing, recipes for enrichment, study guides and lesson plans.