New Media's New Curriculum

In 1969, Brown University introduced what they called "The New Curriculum". Brown's "New Curriculum" was designed to revolutionize the learning process by encouraging students to take more academic risk without fear of these risks affecting their GPA.

Amongst other things, the NEW CURRICULUM also helped usher in the era of independent concentrations and a more project-based approach to learning.

New Media Technology Charter School is on verge of unleashing its own NEW CURRICULUM this fall. In addition to the great impact the new schedule will have, there is another new development that will serve as a catalyst to the project based learning process at New Media, and this is the development of New Media TV.

After observing project based initiatives at several schools over the years, I have come to the following observation:

Contrived projects don't work.

Well, sometimes they do. With choice students and ideal advisors under certain circumstances. The problem is that arbitrary deadlines for projects with no or little real world connection create a culture where students don't understand the need to meet deadlines.

My full intent is to follow through with the technology team's declaration to make New Media TV the central delivery mechanism for all project work next year.

The reasons for this are numerous:

• Short projects are best for the amateur and intermediate level students.
  
  
• Having an 'Broadcast deadine' (i.e. "Your show will air next week, tuesday at 11 a.m.") provides a tangible, non negotiable deadline for our students.
  
  
• Students know that their project is "for real" because it will be seen by hundreds or possibly thousands of viewers.
  
  
• The incentive to do well is fueled by public exposure.
  
  
• The incentive to learn the technology will be fueled by the desire to look good on TV
  
  
• Pressure is put on the advisors to support their students, since work broadcasted on the station will be a reflection of them as well.
  
  
• The station will help us to define our identity in the community as a high school.
  

Our next step is to sit down as a team and work out the details of the schedule, and how to provide the support for this new schedule to work. I suggest we be the first team to address the issue, because we need the projects and the technology to be the central piece of the curriculum around which everything else is built.

Senior Exhibitions

Senior Exhibitions ran from Monday, May 5th to Monday, May 12th, 2008.

I attended all of them with the exception of Tuesday morning, May 6th, and a few others on Monday, May 6th due to time spent helping a few seniors with last minute glitches which required me to run to 7800 to fix, and in one instance, having to help a senior re-create a project that had been accidentally damaged.

Overall, the level of academic rigor was not up to the New Media Standard of what we're looking for in a senior project. However, there were a few bright stars in the bunch, and overall, the work was BETTER than the work we're used to seeing from many of the students, especially those with a history of low performance academically.

Many of the issues with academic rigor are the result of students not getting ample input from multiple academic advisors. In this case, that is especially true in the areas of English/Language Arts and Math.

As I told Dr. Walker, many of these issues will not be as acute when we are in the new building, because the senior classes henceforth will be more integrated into the larger NMTCS community and will have more access to the resources of the school.

As it stands now, two senior student groups will be presenting in our May 28th Exhibition Night: Justina Ray & Rhonda Bartlett, and Tierra Jones.