We asked Jana, teacher at Central Sydney Intensive English High School a couple of questions about the project…..
What was the project about?
Our students are in an Intensive English high school and they needed to learn how to explain concepts about the human body in English. For their PBL project, they worked in groups to make YouTube videos that explain how the digestive system works. The students designed, filmed, narrated, and edited their videos themselves. Their results were posted on their teacher’s YouTube channel. This project was a part of a larger futures-focused program that involved making projects in all of their classes and presenting them at the end of the term.
What did students love about taking part in the project?
They had a lot of fun working together. They really enjoyed showing their videos at the presentation day, and they were very excited at the idea of having them on YouTube.
Did you come up against any challenges?
Some challenges were getting the students to work independently outside of the classroom. It was their job to communicate with one another about different roles and jobs to complete. Of course, planning and creating everything through a second language can also pose many challenges, but the students work very hard when they have an authentic audience that will be listening to them speak.
What technology did you use?
I let the students decide which apps to use. I have used computer programs to edit in the past, and that has been much slower as they can only work on their projects at school. I gave the students the guidelines to create the video, and how they decided to edit it was up to them.
How did you structure collaboration?
They were in groups of four, and I tried to mix gender and nationalities. This way, the students were forced to work together using English. While this can be difficult for them at first, they gained a lot of communication skills very quickly.
How did students share their work?
Student work was posted to our YouTube channel. We also had a presentation day, where the students introduced the work to an audience of parents, members of the Department of Education, our executive staff, and two other Stage 4 classes. After making speeches and videos, we had a presentation area set up for the audience to walk around and see their work for each class.
