Dive Brief:
- In Canada, Ontario's Carleton Place High School let students conceptualize and execute a business plan in which they produced and eventually sold cell phone cases they created on a 3D printer.
- Eric Hardie, principal of Carleton Place High School, writes that the experimental project led to multi-subject learning, helping students gain valuable skills in technology, business, economics, math and science; the project led to a school partnership with the local Chamber of Commerce to further promote entrepreneurship in the school.
- Hardie recommends challenge-based, project approaches to other subjects like drama. The original class of cell phone cover makers are now engaged in a new business: creating and selling custom action figures and bobble heads.
Dive Insight:
Some of the questions that principal Eric Hardie reported considering in order to encourage student innovation were: Does the traditional school system encourage students to learn about their passions? Is the system flexible enough to adapt to students' learning experiences to make this happen?
"Structure, curriculum and adults currently drive the learning agenda, not students," Hardie wrote. "This project demonstrated that it is possible to negotiate the curriculum and have students drive their own learning."
Project-based personalized learning is a current trend on the upswing in education, with some states like Vermont even mandating personalized learning. Signed into law in June 2013, the Flexible Pathways Initiative in part requires personalized learning plans (PLPs) to be conceptualized and implemented for all students in grades 7-12. And around the country, innovative programs like Big Picture Learning, which can operate in existing public schools or specialized charter schools, also encourage self-directed learning though critical thinking and projects chosen and executed largely by students.
