PBL News @SDUSD

Real world experiences are essential to PBL. This fall SDUSD middle and high school interdisciplinary teams from PBL Institute had the opportunity to apply for PBL Experiences: Mini-grants. Career related experiences could be a project launch, investigation, presentation of learning, or culminating event. 2,300 students have or will participate in the following mini-grant funded experiences:

• San Diego River Foundation - Montgomery Middle STEAM Magnet, 6th
  Kumeyaay Life That Affects San Diego ‘Keep San Diego’s History Alive’
• USS Midway Museum - Pacific Beach MS Blue STEAM, 8th
  Magic on the Midway
• San Diego Public Library / MoPA / Telemundo - Roosevelt MS, SLIM
  Heroes Entre Nosotros
• Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College - Kearny HS DMD, 9th
  Seeds of Sustainability
• San Diego Maritime Museum - Mission Bay HS Blue STEAM, 9th
  The 'Buc' Stops Here! Maritime accountability in an eco-friendly world
• UCSD Gardens, Birch Aquarium, and SDG&E Energy Innovation Center - SD HS BXB, 9th
  Startups for Sustainability
  
• SDG&E Energy Innovation Center - Marston MS, 8th
  Advocators for a Pollutions Free Industrialization
• Natural History Museum - DMD Kearny HS, 11th
  STEM Stories: The Power of the Influencer
  
• Specialty Produce - Mira Mesa HS
  Comida Rica y Saludable-Healthy and Delicious Food

What does it take to design a candy bar that people will like and pay for? Engineering students at Mission Bay High School learned that there is a lot more to engineering a product than simply designing it.

Engineering teacher, David West, uses the Candy Bar Design Competition to introduce his 11th grade engineering students to design, specifications, prototyping, testing, and evaluating their own chocolate bars for presentation to a panel of stakeholders (from chocolatiers to faculty and parents). The winning team in this high stakes competition held at the SDG&E Energy Innovation Center was awarded the opportunity to represent the class and have their candy bar produced to sell for a limited time on campus. It was evident through the presentations that students not only learned how to engineer a candy bar, but how to use consumer data and feedback to drive their decisions about design, marketing, and revision of their bars. Students also spoke about how cost analysis drove their decisions on ingredients, bar size, and pricing. In addition to engineering practices, students reflected that this project taught them the importance of skills like time management, communication, and collaboration.

Another wonderful example of real world learning, making a meaningful impact on our SDUSD students!

Guest Contribution: Candice Fee, School Innovation Program Manager

As educators, empirical research shows us that individuals who are a part of underrepresented populations and have a mentor of similar gender/ethnic background tend to seek higher level education in STEM fields, which then allows for access to higher level STEM jobs. Therefore, Kearny Digital Media and Design teachers in the 11th grade decided to develop a project to provide their students with opportunities to develop relationships with women and other minorities in STEM with the hopes that they will ultimately be more apt to consider STEM careers.

The interdisciplinary project entitled: “STEM Stories: The Power of the Influencer” is designed for student teams to learn about and share the stories of underrepresented populations in STEM professions. Students will use this information to create a Literary Science Symposium, targeting the Linda Vista Community, in which they will showcase interdisciplinary pieces that incorporate science, art (poetry, multimedia) and history products. Each biography will profile one individual from an underrepresented group in the field of STEM through video and print media. The content will feature his or her inspiration and motivation to work in STEM and his or her struggles and/or the highlights of being part of an underrepresented group in a STEM profession.

During the week of October 14th, STEM professionals from around San Diego visited the Kearny Education to Employment Lab to be interviewed by the 11th grade student teams. In teams of 4-5, students gathered information for their biography by conducting personal interviews. Students and professionals engaged in meaningful conversations about their backgrounds and experiences, how they see themselves in the STEM field, who they admire, and what inspires them.

Students said they valued this experience greatly as the personal interviews gave them an accurate picture of who their interviewee was; an experience that could only be achieved through hands-on learning. After this interaction, students feel confident accurately telling another's story through print media and written narrative. We will continue to follow this story as the production process continues.

Formerly the CCTE Showcase, this year's showcase on May 20, 2020 is moving to the Town and Country Convention Center. With more space, there will be an increase in opportunities for participation in the categories of STEAM, CCTE, and PBL.

We are currently planning to host two institutes in the Summer of 2020. Interest in attending PBL Institute has grown and we hope that running two institutes will provide for better differentiation and collaboration. Save the dates below with the understanding that the number of participants is TBD by available funding and grant notifications. Principal sign-ups will be opened in late February.

• Institute 1 - June 15-26
• Institute 2 - August 10-21

Sign-up to participate in the Jacobs Institute Changemaker Challenge. A social good challenge event for Spring 2020.

The Jacob's Institute is inviting middle and high school educators and their students (13+) to use design thinking to create innovative solutions to local and global problems aligned to the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Teens will submit video pitches to win prizes!

Participation is limited to 40 educators and their students. Sign up at pactful.org. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through January 15, 2020.

Project Based Learning 101

Interested in getting started with PBL? Let's customize an experience for your site or team. Contact Reuben Hoffman at rhoffman@sandi.net.

Design Thinking

Interested in getting started with Design Thinking? Let's customize an experience for your site or team. Contact Reuben Hoffman at rhoffman@sandi.net.

Google Certified Educator Level 1 - March 4

Becoming Level 1 Certified will help you create a more student-centered classroom, understand the functionality of GSuite apps, and support your quest for lifelong learning. Contact Julie Garcia at jgarcia@sandi.net

SDUSD Innovative Teaching Network
A community of SDUSD educators that shares, learns, and grows with and from each other.

January 14 from 4:30pm-6:00pm at Mount Everest Academy - Register

Mark your calendars for the other days - March 11 & May 7

When students share their learning with others, amazing things happen! According to the Share Your Learning website, “when students share their learning with an authentic audience, we provide them with an opportunity to share their story, reflect on their growth, and engage in real dialogue with others about their learning and their futures.”

Go to shareyourlearning.org and join 300,000 other educators that have committed to having students share their work publicly. Check out and use the resources they have developed to support you in setting up student exhibitions, student presentations of learning, and student-led conferences. #shareyourlearning

Free SYL Exhibition E-Course - Share Your Learning has created a new free e-course to support teachers in the implementation of exhibitions or showcases of student learning. This free course is available by signing up on www.shareyourlearning.org and selecting Exhibition as the SYL practice you want to try. The course is composed of a series of email lessons, each focused on a necessary component of exhibition, with easy to follow activities that will get teachers ready to have their students exhibit their learning at the end of a unit or project.

San Diego ePortal

How do we build opportunities for students to interact with experts from industry and our community? How and where do I find people and then the time to coordinate these opportunities? It has to be easier!

Check out San Diego County’s Work Based Learning ePortal, a FREE resource for employers to get involved in the education system and for educators to connect their students to work based learning opportunities (work site tours, guest speakers, job shadows, internships, and more!).

If you are interested in being trained on the San Deigo ePortal, register for one of the following trainings:

January 15, 2020 Register here

March 11, 2020 Register here

April 15, 2020 Register here

Donors Choose

Great option for all types of funding related to student learning. Create an account at www.donorschoose.org

* The events listed below are paid events not sponsored by SDUSD. They have been included in the newsletter for awareness of events that pertain to PBL / Linked Learning / CCTE / Pathways. You can follow these events for free virtually on many social media platforms, especially Twitter.

• Educating for Careers Conference (Long Beach) - February 27-29, 2020
  The Educating for Careers Conference is an annual three-day professional development event surrounding career technical education (CTE).
  
  
• Linked Learning Conference - (Long Beach) - March 16-17
  This is a great opportunity to learn from educators, postsecondary institutions, and economic development and employer leaders who come together to make the vision of Linked Learning a reality.
  
  
• CUE Conference (Palm Springs) - March 19-21, 2020
  The Spring CUE Conference is an annual three-day event focused on educational innovation and educational technology.
  
  
• Deeper Learning Conference (San Diego) - March 25-27, 2020
  Annual conference focused on experiencing deeper learning for yourself and engaging with others to create more equitable schools around the globe. To receive San Diego educators discount rate, "Apply Promo or Voucher" = DLSD
  

Check out the weekly updates on the Office of School Innovation Blog.

News from TK-12 focused on students in action and teachers learning innovative practices to implement in the classroom.

For more information regarding PBL at SDUSD, please contact Reuben Hoffman at rhoffman@sandi.net, visit the SDUSD PBL Website, follow #sdusdpbl & @reubenhoffman on Twitter.

Please invite me to see your students in action, so I can share more of the great things happening in SD Unified.

If you would like to submit something for a future newsletter, please contact Reuben Hoffman at rhoffman@sandi.net.

Email: rhoffman@sandi.net
Website: https://sites.google.com/sandi.net/pbl/home
Phone: 8584142557