Episode Details

Ron Fortunato, president of Trillium Learning and an employee of NASA Ames Research Center, explains how to start project based learning that solves real problems for real partners. Start where it fits, expect it to look chaotic, and grow through teachers who train other teachers instead of launching school-wide at once.

In Kodiak, the school board hoped for one project with a dozen kids and one teacher. Within the first year it grew to more than 80 students, five teachers and three schools. A sixth-grade class in Copper River studied a month of temperature data and pushed the sensor maker to harden its earthquake platform.

What you'll learn

• Look at local organizations and the problems they are trying to solve, then pick one of those problems as your first student project.
• Expect the first days to look like chaos, and trust that students settle into roles within days.
• Run weekly status reviews where each student reports last week's goals, current status and next week's goals.
• Train a small group of flexible teachers first, then let them train the next group.
• Win your school board's support before you start, and show parents what students are doing.

Chapters

• 0:00 Students run NASA-style weekly status reviews
• 4:32 Why real projects look like chaos first
• 6:30 Board support and ramping up gradually
• 10:52 Reaching all kids, not just gifted ones
• 15:20 Train the trainer to scale with teachers
• 17:35 Can a whole school run on projects
• 21:08 Where principals should start and who to contact

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Questions this episode answers

How do you scale project-based learning beyond a few gifted students?
Fortunato says students pick it up fast, even sixth graders and special needs kids. The hard part is training teachers. His train-the-trainer model takes a year to reach level one, and those teachers then train the next group while he trains the following level.

How do you get started with real-world project-based learning?
Fortunato says to look at local organizations and the problems they are trying to solve. In Kodiak, fisheries matter, so tsunami marine debris carrying invasive species became a real concern. Then you define the problem, milestones, goals and schedule around it.

Why does real-world project-based learning look chaotic at first?
Fortunato says people have not yet figured out the real problem, the roles, the organization or the classroom management. Teachers worry, but within days students realize they are a team and depend on each other's work, and the chaos settles.

About Ron Fortunato

President of Trillium Learning and an employee of NASA Ames Research Center.

Links and resources

• Ron Fortunato bio (PDF)
• Trillium Learning
• NASA Ames Research Center
• Viking program on Mars
• Kodiak earthquake sensor installation
• Nano-agriculture project
• Email Ron Fortunato
• Rate on iTunes
• Rate on Stitcher