Strong National Museum of Play
Rochester, NY
Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
9AM-4PM

The Constructivist Celebration is an opportunity for you to let your creativity run free with the world’s best open-ended software tools and enthusiastic colleagues who share your commitment to children, computing, creativity and constructivism. You might think of this stimulating event as a spa day for your mind and soul!

Best of all, the Constructivist Celebration @ NYSCATE is being held at the Strong National Museum of Play, a great setting that should prove inspiring and fun.

The day kicks off with a keynote, by Gary Stager on “Creative Computing”. By the way, for you Stager fans, this will be the only chance to see Gary at NYSCATE this year.

Then you will enjoy five hours of creativity on your own laptop using open-ended creativity software provided by consortium members FableVision, Inspiration, LCSI, and Tech4Learning. Representatives of the Constructivist Consortium will be there to assist with your project development.

Plus you get to keep the software and have a fabulous lunch!

For more details and registration, see the Constructivist Consortium registration website. (If you want to register for BOTH the pre-conference celebration and NYSCATE at the same time, click here to go to the NYSCATE website. You will be asked to become a NYSCATE member, but this is free!)

I’ll be co-leading this event, so I hope to see you there!

Sylvia

In Raising our Standards, Developing Projects that Endure, Stager argues that good projects meet higher standards than those found in state mandated lists of curricular objectives.

I suggest that educators plan and evaluate student projects based on a loftier set of goals. Teachers should embrace the aesthetic of an artist or critic and create opportunities for project development that strive to satisfy the following criteria. Is the project:

• Beautiful
• Thoughtful
• Personally meaningful
• Sophisticated
• Shareable with a respect for the audience
• Moving
• Enduring

Read the article online here, or download the PDF here.

I recommended Part 1 in this blog post last November, and highlighted the other excellent articles (still free, still online!) found in that issue here.

Sylvia

I hope you had a chance to look at the whole Creative Educator magazine, because it’s great. It’s published twice a year by Tech4Learning, publisher of creativity software for K-12 schools

The Creative Educator is fully available online, and in addition to the project article, this month’s issue has some great articles.

• Universal design – tales from a 4th grade classroom about using software that includes ALL students
• Bloom and Marzano for the 21st century
• Digital Storytelling
• Portfolios – and an interview with Helen Barrett, a pioneer and thought-leader of the digital portfolio movement
• Lessons and ideas from classroom teachers using creativity software to enhance learning

The articles are all online, and every issue can be downloaded as a PDF. But if you live in the U.S. there’s also a way to get the good ol’ fashioned paper version for FREE – just subscribe here.

Sylvia

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What Makes a Good Project? covers eight elements of projects that make them worth doing:

• Purpose and relevance
• Sufficient time
• Complexity
• Intensity
• Connected to others
• Access to materials
• Shareable
• Novelty

Stager concludes with questions teachers can ask themselves to improve the design of project-based learning experiences for students.

Project-based learning does take extra work to design and implement, but the results are worth it for everyone involved. So if you make the effort, it’s worth doing it right. As Stager says, “Making things is better than being passive, but making good things is even better!”

• Read the article online
• Download What Makes a Good Project? (PDF)

Sylvia

May 1, 2009 update – Part 2 of this article is now online!  Part 2: What Makes a Good Project

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