Help Support Project Based Learning

Students assembling a Biz Challenge computer

In the education reform world there is always talk of PBL or Project Based Learning. To some people it is seen as the saving grace of the educational reform movement, the "magic bullet" if you will. The problem is implementation. How do you fit PBL to the standards required within your school?

I am fortunate enough to work at a school that embraces the PBL model all over. Our students get both a high school diploma as well as a certification in their chosen vocation. They can choose from trades such as carpentry, culinary, cosmetology, business, electricity, nursing and IT technology. Each employs their own brand of PBL around the school. Senior electricians help fix wiring problems within the school, carpenters hang doors and shelves and computer technicians repair student and teacher computers. 

While each "Vocational Academy" uses PBL daily to teach the required skills, most academies have a large project that helps to show students how all those skills work together. In the IT Technology and Business academies that project is known as the "Biz Challenge". 

Completed computer from Biz Challenge

The Biz Challenge consists of 2 teams of Business and IT Technology students working to design, build and raffle off a custom designed computer. The Business students handle the marketing and accounting process while the IT students design, build and test the computer. Each team is given $50 seed money that allows them to purchase items they will need to begin raising money. From that $50 teams in the past have raised between $2,000 and $7,000 profit. The computers they raffle are not cheap either. Past computers have featured HD monitors, blu-ray players, cases with LED's, terabyte hard drives and 6+ GB of RAM. The computers always turn out great and are always drooled over when they are shown off around the school.

All money raised from Biz Challenge goes to funding a service learning trip for selected students where they travel to a town in need of help and offer their skills learned in school to make a difference. These trips are recorded in a public wiki and were even featured in Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (Mercy Vocational High School). In past years these trips have gone to areas effected by Hurricane Katrina but this year the students are helping closer to home. Tropical Storm Lee hit Towanda, PA very hard last year and the small town is still in need of help. The students will be travelling there over spring break to offer their services to the community. 

This is where you come in. Below are links to both teams webpages (built themselves) which include ways to donate to this great cause. Any little bit will help immensely and will benefit the people of Towanda as well as our students. Donate on behalf of your school, your family or yourself. Donate to help our students know that there are people out there who care and want them to make a difference. But most of all donate to help the people of Towanda, PA get back their homes, communities and lives.

Biz Challenge Team CB2

Biz Challenge Team Professional-LEE Established

http://operationkatrina2011.wikispaces.com/ 

http://operationkatrina2010.wikispaces.com/