Collaborative Project between PPHS and FHS

Met with Jenni Durbin, Lee Scropos, and Josh Piper (Josh was present via video chat) about the collaborative project between Pleasant Plains High School and Farmington High School American Literature students.  Krystal Oh and Jamie Naylor were also present and offered advice on the project.  We decided the project will be based on Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues.  The basics of the project are as follows:

• students will research Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues and journal about what his virtues were and his process for attaining the virtues
• students will then work in partner groups using Google Docs to collaboratively brainstorm lists of their virtues and the rationale for each
• student partner groups will attempt to attain their virtues for seven days as Ben Franklin did.  Each student will keep a journal log of his/her daily progress on the virtues.
• student partner groups will collaborate on a summary of their experiences.

We then created a generic rubric for each stage of the process.  The best part was that we worked in Google Docs with Josh so we could simultaneously see/edit the document throughout our meeting.  As the process is coming together, I am becoming more relaxed about the planning stages.  It is starting to feel like a typical interdepartmental collaboration that I've done with the history teachers in the past.  At the same time, I am getting excited that students from both schools are going to work on this project together.

We have a few things to work out in the next week to ensure that the project is going to work.  Josh is checking in with the FHS tech coordinator to make sure his students will have access to gmail and Google Docs.  All of my students and Jenni's students have Google accounts - Lee needs to make sure that his students finish creating Google accounts.

A little tweaking of the rubric and an outline of the project and our expectations is all that is left to prepare.  The rest will be up to the students.  I think I will try to arrange video chat introductions of the students sometime next week.  I will also begin work on pairing up students.  We will have some groups of three since there are more PPHS students that will be involved in the project than FHS students.