Project Learning: Expeditions in Portland, Maine | Edutopia

Project Learning: Expeditions in Portland, Maine Edutopia
Citation: (2010, April 16). Project Learning: Expeditions in Portland, Maine. Video posted to http://www.edutopia.org/. (2010).




In this video, students in Maine were all given a laptop for their own personal use. Having a one-to-one laptop to student ratio has made all the difference in their school's test scores and the morality of the school as well. The school system itself is a low-income school district, with more than 50% of students receiving a free or reduced lunch.

Upon receiving all of these laptops, the teachers in the building had to decide what to do with them. They decided to develop something they call "Expeditionary Learning," in which students use technology to solve problems and use their own ideas, as well as tie all the subjects together in a relevant manner. For example, in a science class they studied modern art structures adn created their own videwos of the structures and used their research to create their own structures. This combined science, math, technology, and art into one activity.

The teachers mentioned that it was a lot of work to come up wiht something so innovative and untested. Every week they have to re-evaluate their lesson plans to see where the students are at and where they want them to be. however, the teachers were all excited about what they were doing, and morale of the school was high. I think that even though this new way of learning was a lot of work, teachers were all involved and interested in expeditionary learning as well as the students.

I especially agreed with the comment the principal made towards the end of the movie. He said that he doesn't agree with simply teaching standards, because who knows if those standards will be everything the students need to know 10 or 20 years down the road. Even though we don't know what students will need to know in 20 years due to this rapidly changing world, we do know that students will need to be given the tools they need to solve problems, think critically, and work with other people.

Personally, I would love to teach in a school that is so innovative. I think this school is on the right track when it comes to imbedding technology throughout the whole teaching process, and I also think that teaching students to think critically and work with others is more important than teaching students rote information. I think if you teach students to think critically, learning rote information will soon follow. This school did not specifically teach rote learning, but their test scores were still extremely high, proving that teaching effective critical thinking skills is a way to increase test scores among students. I think Ohio schools have a lot to learn from this school in Maine.