The Approach of CTSC Projects

A Project Approach to Learning

CTSC believes that the best way for teachers to use technology as a catalyst for rethinking the teaching and learning process is to design technology-infused projects. These projects engage students in substantive learning as they take advantage of technology resources.

Using a curriculum design process, facilitators help teachers identify essential questions related to specific content areas as a basis for developing a project. Ideally, learning through project work is also interdisciplinary. For example, social studies, science, and art topics may all be woven together. Projects also typically involve central themes, such as change as a constant in the local community or the evolution of space exploration.

How Our Approach Helps Teachers

CTSC professional development projects "situate" learning in the particular context of the individual teacher, school, and district. Facilitators identify the unique needs of each teacher, assist the teacher in developing strategies to address specific needs, and work alongside the teacher in the classroom to help implement the strategies.

Creating projects with teachers introduces new technology while it simultaneously shares new knowledge about effective teaching strategies. By working on a project of their own choosing to address learning goals for their students, it becomes clear that technology can enhance their practice.

How Our Approach Helps Students

For students, learning through projects can result in a deeper understanding of the relationships among different forms of knowledge and different disciplines. Optimally, learning through projects develops students' research, analytical, and problem-solving skills. It fosters their ability to work cooperatively as they engage in interesting and imaginative classroom work.

Learning through technology-infused projects is an effective way for both teachers and students to develop their ability to approach learning from new perspectives. Using technology as a tool can free students to focus on higher-order thinking skills.

Overview of Workshop Series

CTSC facilitators use the curriculum design process to individualize the ways that teachers can infuse technology into their own practice. They first work in after-school sessions on site with the teachers, and then they help the teachers implement their technology-infused project in the classroom.

CTSC facilitators conduct two types of professional development projects to accommodate the different time constraints and learning needs of busy practitioners:

• Technology Workshop Series:
  For practitioners who want to create a single technology-infused lesson for their students.
• Technology Infusion Project:
  For practitioners who want to develop the ability to create a more sophisticated technology-infused unit comprised of several lessons.

Both use a project development approach that helps teachers construct meaningful lessons for their students, providing them with an education that is rich in subject content and infused with technology.

Backwards by Design Approach

CTSC facilitators work with teachers to develop lessons for the classes which are based on a curriculum design process, created by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their 1998 book, Understanding by Design (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA). The teachers each create a curriculum unit that begins with an essential question developed through a process that moves backwards from an expression of desired student outcomes to a description of how students might demonstrate those outcomes, and, finally, to the creation of a teaching environment that enables students to demonstrate new knowledge and conceptual understandings.

Wiggins and McTighe outlined three components of a meaningful learning exercise for students:

• Identify the desired results:
  Essential questions to be answered, the enduring understandings to be acquired, and the knowledge and skills needed for learning to occur.
• Determine acceptable evidence of learning:
  Relevant performance tasks; quizzes, tests, and prompts; and self-assessment tools.
• Plan learning experiences and instruction:
  Identify and sequence classroom activities.