Quilting Our History

Quilting Our History: An Integrated Schoolwide Project by Cassandra Van Buren and Deborah Aufdenspring

The article tells the tale of a cross curriculum project by the student of the New Technology High School in Napa, California. The students, working groups, tackled different areas of a multimedia CD-ROM that covered local history. The groups worked in areas like: Design, Artistic Design, Interface Design, History, Genealogy, Artifacts, Publishing, and Video Documentation. The work of these group was coordinated into the final CD like pieces of a quilt coming together. The scope of this project was very large with students using county records and interviewing people outside of the school. The project was a great way to teach more than just education requirements. The students had the opportunity to experience real work place scenarios. At one point in the project there was a conflict with software and the student groups started blaming each other. The teachers used the conflict to point out the important of moving past blame and working together to fix the problem. I think that this type of project is great way to open students minds to all the possibles of technology. The interaction of one group with another creates real world learning. The main problem with idea is the size and effort needed to create the project. Teachers had to work during the summer with out pay to create the project. I think this type of educational experience needs to be integrated into the regular curriculum.

Q1. How do you create a project like this on a smaller scale and make it easy to use in many different school setting?
A1. The question is hard because the idea of the project is to draw on large group of students to create dynamic learning and to make it smaller may defeat the main purpose of the project. One simple idea would be to create a classroom wide project that uses a lot of the same elements and covers the curriculum requirements.

Q2. What about students who have trouble working in groups or students who try to slide by on the work of others?
A2. The groups would need some from of individual accountability and I do not think that all standards can be met in group work. The groups can work to inspire all students because most high school students want to please their peers more than teachers.