Electronic Game Project
                                                                          By:  Rob Barrett

Driving Question:

How do we use our knowledge of electricity to build a review game that will help players prepare for an upcoming test?

Standards:

•  HS-PS2-5 Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
• Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that an electric current can produce a magnetic field and that a changing magnetic field can produce an electric current.
• HS-PS3-2 Energy: Develop and use models to illustrate that energy at the macroscopic scale can be accounted for as a combination of energy associated with the motions of particles (objects) and energy associated with the relative positions of particles (objects).

Team / Culture Building:​

• Students will use the Values Cards, Inner Heroes protocol, and Creative DNA protocol to better understand their unique skill sets when working with teams.
• The teacher will use the results of the Google Survey to help sort students into teams.

Entry Event:

• Play an example electronic review games to launch project.​

Stakeholders:

•  Biophysics students 
•  Staff members interested in PBL

Empathy Building:

• Prior to launching the project, students will brainstorm attributes of a good team member and identify their Hopes, Fears, and Norms as they relate to the project. 
• These experiences help students see what they expect from each other and help re-affirm the social contract before beginning the project.​​

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Share the  Google Slides presentation with students.
• Since this project is on a shortened timeline, students explored the project description via an Entry Doc to generate “Need to Knows”. In this case the NTK’s were basically a practice for them at identifying key things their projects needed to include.

• Students generate NTK’s and then ask these back to the teacher for clarification. They are also able to search for information and check-out example game boards in class to see how they work. 
• The teacher also posted  a  “How to” Video to help with troubleshooting for students unfamiliar with basic circuit work.

Incubation:

• Students are familiar with brainstorming and generating ideas on sticky notes and on whiteboards.

• Students will work in groups to come-up with 10 different ideas on game board styles they could use (variation on the Idea Quota protocol). ​​

Checking in:

•  The teacher will visit with individual students and groups of students daily to help them identify their progress through the entry doc requirements.
• Students will need to reference their entry doc and show how specific design elements have been accounted for before beginning their work.
• The teacher will go over attributes of a solid project with groups and point-out ways of improving their work. ​

---

Solution Building:

•  Students will look critically at the entry doc to make sure that key requirements are being satisfied

• Students will use a variation of the NUF Test to select one idea to work with as a group. 

Critique and Revision: 

• Students engaged in a targeted review of specific topics and requirements for their projects.
• Students give and receive feedback through the I like, I wonder protocol.

Authentic Audience:

• Students will share their creations with students from other classes as well as staff members and administrators who are able to observe and critique their work. 

Final Presentation:

• Students will be in charge of their final product since the start of the project - they must own their successes and misses.
• The entry doc includes criteria outlining what mastery of this project looks like. The teacher will meet with individuals / groups to assess the quality of their work and provide opportunities for revision.

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• The audience members and students will refer to this slide to help their conversations as students share-out their work and audience members give feedback.

• Students will reflect on their work via a Google form that the teacher can collect and use.
• They will also share their ideas in a circle so the whole class can reflect on the connections made during the experience. 

Click here for the teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator:
​
Rob Barrett is a researcher-turned teacher with a passion for making learning authentic, meaningful, and fun.  He currently teaches biophysics at East Kentwood Freshmen Campus.

     "PBL is an incredible tool for bringing learning back to where we need it to be - looking at real problems in our world and then bringing together stakeholders to fix them while helping everyone involved become even stronger team-players. It builds a better world with more people used to solving problems collaboratively."