When I found out that the next project we were going to do was going to be on the American Civil War, I was excited but a little apprehensive at first. The Civil War was so extensive, I was worried that I wasn't going to take in much information or retain anything that I learned. But through this project I learned that PBL work is truly amazing and that I actually learned more than I would have learning about the Civil War in a traditional setting. I learned that "learning" is continually morphing, we have to change and morph our ideas to form better ones. Collaboration with others and technology tools are also essential to learning and with PBL.
When my partners, Alex and Mira and I formed our essential question, we decided that just focusing on that one question would be enough to cover the extensiveness of the Civil War. Our essential question was, "What were Abraham Lincoln's views on slavery and how did they change over the course of the Civil War." Soon though, as we were doing our research, we decided that just covering that one essential question was not going to be enough to get our standard. We then decided that we needed to cover all the points on the American History Standard; the causes, course, consequences, and the effects of the Civil War on the American people. As we did this we found that we were better able to answer our essential question on Abraham Lincoln. The way we presented our project also morphed and changed. First we started out with a Prezi which we decided was good, but not as in depth as we would have liked. Then we formed that into a video which eventually morphed into a commercial. By changing our ideas, we formed better ones. These better ideas created a final project that we learned a lot from and we were proud of.
Collaboration is essential in the world we live in today. And here at OH Institute we are able to collaborate with others through our PBL. My partners and I did face some challenges while working together, but overall we worked wonderfully together. At first Mira was the only one who was actually working on the Prezi; she was the only one who was putting the information into the project. Alex and I collected, cited, and wrote the information that we were putting into the Prezi. It was hard for Mira to do the bulk of the work. Eventually Alex and I made Prezi accounts and we were all able to work on it together. We split up the information and we were all responsible for our own parts. Collaboration is nice, but sometimes the finished project is better if the work is split up into equal loads--there is less stress on one individual. Jinging our Prezi was a challenge, because it took so much time. We worked through it and created an awesome 20 minute video. I think that collaboration should be used in all aspects of learning.
Technology is a truly wonderful tool. For our Civil War project we used many different technology tools. First of all we used the internet to gather all of our information we needed to form our project. We shared this information of a Google Doc. Prezi was the first tool we decided to use. We wanted to use it because it is very innovative and it worked well for presenting all of the information we had. Jing is a program where you can create an audio/video clip that synchronizes with a website. Our Jinged Prezi is 20 minutes long. We decided that Jinged Prezi was a little too boring. We then used a program called Camtasia Studios--which is a video editing system. We then created a commercial to present for our video. To record this we used an IPhone. To me it is really interesting that simple tools like a phone can be used when we are doing projects. We used Windows Movie Maker and Gmail to form our commercial. The final tool we used was YouTube. I am glad that OH Institute provides me the opportunity to use technology in an innovative and exciting way.
My overall reaction to this project is positive. I gained a wealth of information while working with my partners, doing research, and putting the project together. Even if this project was extensive, and we did cover a lot of information, I realized I learned more through doing PBL. I have realized the importance of collaboration, technology, and how new ideas can from into better ones.
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