Developing a Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Unit

Developing a Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Unit

This past week, the faculty at my high school voted on the topic for what will become a school-wide interdisciplinary unit.  The topic chosen was “21^st Century skills:  What’s an Education Worth?”  Admittedly, I’m not particularly excited about the topic, but being a government teacher, I can respect any decision made democratically.  To clarify the topic, the group that suggested this topic explained the unit to be one where students explore careers in fields related to the subjects they take.  The culminating project will be a school career wiki that includes student videos and writings.

This unit is still very much in the planning phases – we have yet to even set a date for when the unit will be taught.  In preparation for our next collaborative planning meeting, I feel the need to use this space to ask and answer a few questions that I think our faculty should consider as we prepare this interdisciplinary unit.

1. Does our high school have access to the hardware necessary to make this project happen?  If not, then how will we acquire/compensate for any inadequacies?

I think our school really needs to take a very close look at this.  The most useful computers in the building are the freshly replaced laptops issued to each faculty member.  Other computers in the building are seriously out date.  If we have access to A/V equipment, it would be news to me.  Sure, we could rely on students’ access to technology at home and through their mobile devices.  However, I’ve made that assumption once already this year, and regretted the extra work it added when I had to devise an alternative assessment because some students had no access to take simple digital pictures.  For this unit to work successfully, I think we have to be able to ensure that we have the tools in-house to make this successful.

2.    What software(s) will be used for students to collaborate and share their pieces of the project?

Richardson gives numerous examples of very good wikis and uses for wikis in chapter four of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools.  Which one will be best for this project?  Will we host the videos on another site, then imbed them in the wiki?  Will the videos be hosted on www.youtube.com?  Will we use another source?  What about images?

3.    How will student collaboration be facilitated?

This question, I think must be answered before all others, and I fear that right now, this is the weakest.  Administration’s approach seems to want to leave much room for the individual content areas to develop their own assessments and criteria for student contributions.  Personally, I think a common thematic unit should also involve a common rubric.  This would be a great opportunity to create discussion on what rigor really looks like (which is a strong theme throughout many faculty meetings this year).  Teachers, like their students, learn by doing, and this may be a great tool to improve our craft as well as create student understanding and learning.  If I had it my way, I suggest that content areas create “production teams,” like you would find at a commercial site that.  Students would contribute in one of a number of different ways – some may be responsible for acting in a video, others would be responsible for creative design or written content.

Over all, I think this has the potential to be a really fantastic project.  Now we have to work out the details.