With their presentations streaming live online at wikispaces.com, members of five teams of students made their pitches Monday morning for a $10,000 remodeling project at Turning Point Learning Center.
The money was allocated early this year by Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas, which operates the charter school for the Emporia school district.
The plans for improvements, and the $10,000 to make them, were at stake for the teams — THE Team, Team ACEEK, TPLCTopDesign, The Color Cavaliers and the Sauer Team.
The board that chose which plan or combination of plans would be used on the project was made up of Mike Cook, executive director of the association; Emporia school superintendent John Heim; and Principal Terry Rehrenbach and Kevin Honeycutt, both of the association.
They chose the overall plan from Team ACEEK, with a few ideas that will be added in from other teams’ presentations.
ACEEK is made up of Antonio Tosti, leader, eighth grade; Colby Ratzlaff, seventh grade; Elicia Aceves, fifth grade; Eric Roland, seventh grade; and Kegan Magathan, sixth grade.
Even their teacher was amazed by the level of ability shown in all of the teams’ plans and the presentations they created to showcase their ideas, costs and implementation.
“They spoke without notes and they knew what they were talking about,” Lewman said. “But when I think back and compare them to (other) fifth- through eighth-graders, I’m just astounded.
“Their plan was very comprehensive. Everything had a nice, fluid connection between all the rooms.”
All of the team members had looked at the current uses of the rooms and what they wanted them to become. They talked with designers and architects and got ideas they could apply to their projects.
They made 360-degree panoramic videos of the school before they began, then created their own virtual models. Budgets were imbedded into the wiki pages they used online, and teams used PowerPoint, Keynote or Google software to organize their information into professional presentations.
“Our kids are working with the most up-to-date materials,” Lewman said.
One team’s presentation evolved from its willingness to take risks. They recoded Open Source software and rewrote the program to change it from a first-person shooter game into a virtual tour with enhancements.
“They rewrote the codes so the gun was completely gone, and we could actually walk through the school as if you were actually there,” Lewman said.
The team redesigned the front of the school and added houses and trees to the surroundings.
“I’ve got fifth-, sixth-, seventh-, eighth-graders coding software,” Lewman said. “I love it.”
The presentations on Monday were viewed on-site by parents, members of the community and most of the board members. Cook joined the group by videoconferencing, while educators in the “community of learning” watched the streaming version on-line.
“We had people from Canada in there, we had people in New York, from across Kansas and one from Texas,” Lewman said of the people she knew were watching. “And we have a lot of people who are viewing it because it is archived.”
She said that others who want to see the presentations may go to http://tplc10kproject.wikispaces.com.
The plan presented by ACEEK will be adjusted a little by substituting another team’s room design and adding a feature that proved popular with the students.
TPLCTopDesign, led by Caylie Ratzlaff — the only fifth-grader in a team leader position — will have its music and art room design incorporated into the ACEEK overall plan. The room will include large red “drop chairs” and easels in a primary-colored room. The colors were chosen because Turning Point’s art and music program also are used by kindergarten through eighth-grade students.
“It’s really tough to have a music and an art room in the same space,” said Lewman said. “We can never have chairs set up for ensemble work because it also has to be used for art.”
About 100 virtual students come in to the class every two weeks, in addition to the face-to-face students, who are expected to almost double in number to 45 next school year.
Another team came up with personal bulletin boards for each student to have at their individual stations and that, too, will be included.
“We get to regroup and reorganize now — figure out how the ACEEK Team is going to ... add the different elements in,” Lewman said. “They only put in about a $200 padding in their budget. Now with all these extra elements, they have to go in and rework their budgets and reprioritize.”
They are better prepared now to do that, after almost three months of learning how to go about doing what needs to be done.
“The kids and I sat down and talked about what is it we’ve really learned,” Lewman said. “... It was huge, just this project.”
In addition to the math, reading and research skills they needed to use, the students got experience in:
- Writing resumes
- Interviewing and hiring team members
- Writing professional e-mails and making professional telephone calls
- Soliciting bids from contractors
- Creating budgets
- Taking field trips to look at and price furniture
- Negotiating prices (“That’s tough for anybody,” Lewman interjected.)
- Creating 3D virtual models and making them professional-looking
- Designing space for other people
- Time and task management
“And to manage $10,000,” Lewman added. “I mean, a fifth-grader? That’s fun!”
Working on the teams, the students learned about teamwork and team management, both within themselves and other members of the team.
And they learned to think creatively as they overcame obstacles.
“When we hear from employers from the community and across the world, the No. 1 thing is can they problem solve, think creatively and work in a group,” Lewman said. “That’s what we’re doing here. That’s life progress.”
Lewman said that one consistent complaint she hears from professionals is that college graduates have not learned to solve problems creatively.
“They’re not always able to learn to think on their own, and I think we’re doing them a great disservice,” she said.
Lewman and Charlie Mahoney encouraged the Turning Point students to think through their own problems and come up with solutions; the project belonged to the students, after all, not to the teachers.
In doing that and in taking responsibility for the results, Lewman said they learned an important lesson.
“It’s safe to make mistakes and to learn from them,” she said.
spectator (anonymous) says...
Superb job to all teams and a special congratulations to Team ACEEK !
April 2, 2009 at 9:33 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )