Signs of success

A snippet from a conversation I had with a student this morning:

Student: "This project is long."

Me: "That's why I gave you so many days in class to work on it. I wanted you to have time to make it excellent."

Student: "Yeah, but this project is taking longer than when we just used PowerPoint. Then we'd just put the information on the slide. Now we have to put it in to something. It's a lot harder."

If you haven't been following along, students are creating artifacts of their knowledge as their final exam (see previous posts). the student chose to create a textbook that covers all the information we've covered throughout the trimester.  I banned students from using PowerPoint since they were mainly just filling the slides up with text and totally missing the point of presentation software (they're not presenting, they're weren't creating graphic-based slides, etc.). That decision seems to have been a good one. I've seen many projects-in-progress that I'm sincerely excited to get a chance to look over, which hasn't always been the case in the past.

Final Exam Projects- Day 4

I'll try to keep posting on the progress of the projects as I go. If you haven't already, check out the summary of what was happening on Day 2. Students are now set on what they're doing and how they're going to do it. Now it's just a matter of getting their projects done.

I gave this brief motivational speech at the beginning of each hour:

Here's how much time you have left to complete this final exam project (this is for my 1st hour class- their scheduled exam time is on Monday, so we won't meet on Tuesday or Wednesday)

You know what my expectations are for these projects. My expectations aren't Ridonculous, but they are high. It's okay to have a ridonculous project, but just an average one? I think not.

This is how much your final exam projects contribute to your overall trimester grade. It's not a joke, it's a big part of your trimester. That being said, it's up to you to create a successful project that meets the expectations I've communicated. You know what to do, it's up to you to do it.

If you don't, you'll be:

(Digging your own grave)

However, this project also provides an opportunity for you to:

(Climb the stairway to heaven)

I give this presentation because at this point in the project, they don't really need much of me. I've communicated my expectations for this project, they're familiar with the format (from earlier projects), and it's now just a matter of getting it done. I feel it's important for the students to realize that utilizing their time wisely is an important part of creating a successful project, but at this point I'm not going to go around whacking them upside the head if they choose to not use their time wisely.

Image Credits
Calendar, Expectations, & 20% images: Me. Feel free to use them
Laborer by CarbonNYC
John Foreman - 1696 by Neil101
Stairway to Heaven by Steffe
The Heavens Open by Young Einstein (angels added by author)