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This post is for any student starting a new project, rebooting an old one, or joining the makerspace midway through the year. Passion projects, which are called Pareto Projects in this space, often go through changes over time — and they remain, regardless, an important part of student growth in a Humanities makerspace. This is why they are emphasized as early as the course syllabus and as late as the final exam.
Like last time, there is a master schedule for the culmination of these projects.
All students are on this document. Find the sheet for your period, and then find your last name. That slot indicates your project deadline, whether or not you are presenting. If you are presenting, that is when you will present. Otherwise, that is when you will submit your project.
Refer to the original project guide (embedded below) and FAQ (also below) for more details. When in doubt, ask questions here or in class.
Notes on the provisional nature of the schedule:
Remember to cross-reference these deadlines with the calendar for the end of the year.
The details of the final self-assessment assignment are at the end. First, a review of the background for the Pareto Project.
The following screenshot was taken on December 7, 2018, but it will match the work of any Pareto Project undertaken at any point during any school year.
The complete guide is posted first. Students brainstorm, pitching their ideas according to the guide’s protocol. Then a blueprint is created, submitted, edited, resubmitted, etc., until it is given final approval.
After refining the project’s final goals and answering any frequently-asked questions, we are able to set final goals. These examples come again from 2018:
These projects, of course, are created under the auspices of the Humanities makerspace, which means they are assessed as part of the grade abatement process. No rubrics are necessary. Instead, we look to an authentic validation of student work, as seen here. And we look to the validation and feedback guided by a student’s own self-assessment, reflection, and metacognitive insight.
The blueprint step of this process requires students to set two goals: a learning goal and a product goal. The final self-assessment requires an accounting of those goals. Which goals were met? Which changed over time? In the end, what was created, and what was learned?
The blueprints are completed through Google Forms, which means that every student has a copy of the blueprint emailed to them. We can search through Gmail to find that copy to see what was written back before the project truly began.
For the final self-assessment, we can evaluate the extent to which those goals were met. The prompts are changed from predictive to reflective and metacognitive:
What did you create, develop, explore, experience, etc., through this project? How did the process evolve over time? How did your goals shift over time? What now exists for others to see, hear, experience, etc., and to what extent have you chosen to share that work? Will the project continue? If so, what are your future goals? Be specific, and evaluate yourself honestly and empathetically.
What did you learn through this project? What skills, traits, and knowledge did you gain? Use the specific, universal language of grade abatement, referring explicitly to the details in this handout. These questions can also be used to guide this work:
Whether these final self-assessments are bulleted or, more helpfully, written as essays, they serve as the capstone to the process.
Presentation and non-presentation schedules are saved in this Google Drive folder:
You can also load the documents individually:
Most student projects will be showcased through this Google Site:
For now, it contains projects, testimonials, etc., from previous years. As new projects come in, that site (and this one) will be redesigned to showcase what students have created.
The background and FAQ post for these projects are available below.
These are answers to the most frequently asked questions about the Pareto Project. Make sure you are familiar with the guide first:
No. The guide tells you that your final product is yours to design, so your project could take just about any form you imagine. What happens, I think, is that the time set aside for these projects — see this 2018-2019 calendar for an example — is dominated by talk of presentations. That’s because we have to schedule those, reserve spaces (like the school’s iTheater), and talk to presenters about time constraints. It takes more planning than, say, sharing a collection of poetry or publishing a website.
This is an important question. The short answer is: Ignore them, focus on your work, and let your teachers handle the behavior. Part of the GAP scoring language addresses this. In fact, a criterion for lower profiles is not investing in the classroom environment:
These are the profiles that correspond with failing grades. Look carefully at the idea of deliberate disengagement. Any student who, after being instructed not to, ignores your presentation is risking failure. We’ll take care of that feedback.
The longer answer is this: Be empathetic to the people who aren’t respectful of your work. Many factors go into that decision, whether it results in being on a phone while someone is talking or something more overt. Those folks aren’t excused from the bad decision, but it’s not a decision that has anything to do with you. It’s about them.
No. You are strongly encouraged to share your work to some extent, just to give yourself the authentic experience of having others react to your project. The passion that hopefully inspired you to create your project deserves an audience. It doesn’t require one, however, and some projects are intensely personal, or works-in-progress that would be difficult to share right now, or for some other reason less in need of sharing. If you keep in mind the goals of all assessment in the makerspace, you’ll be able to determine what you need to do.
The guide gives you a few options, including Medium, which is the most likely host for written work of all kinds. Medium is also mentioned in this overview of the end of the writing process, which is similarly about sharing your work. There are other online platforms, of course, and you could use any of them to share your project. You’ll know about Instagram for photography, but you might consider VSCO. If you’re writing stories, Wattpad is an option.
The focus on digital options is all about interstitial access — about giving students an audience beyond the classroom and the period. Think of how widely shared TED Talks are, or how often a powerful piece of writing makes its way around social media. That’s important for all of you. The in-class, in-person options are just as important, however, from hanging artwork on the walls to leading your peers through a discussion.
If you haven’t made this clear already, make it clear to your teacher. You’ll need help determining exactly what to do. Fortunately, you aren’t required to present, share, submit, etc., an unfinished project. Rushing something into being isn’t required, either. Instead, you’ll do what we often do: You’ll focus on the process, discuss and write about your ultimate goals for this project, and submit that reflective and metacognitive work.
I’m including this question separately to reiterate the point: We are almost always more interested in the process than the product, if we must choose between the two. It’s Postman’s idea, which I repeatedly post: The most important thing we learn is always something about how we learn. The products matter, but the process often matters more, especially at your ages.
You also indicated, when you designed your blueprint through the original guide, separate learning and product goals. Everyone, regardless of situation, will write about both of those as part of their Pareto Project.
No. As always, your grade is determined every three or four weeks by the GAP process, which is detailed here. These Pareto Projects are part of a triptych panel, and we fold it into the assessment like we would any other formal assignment. It’s worth noting, though, that these projects — any project-based work, really, especially 20 Time projects — incorporate every single universal skill and trait. That’s why the complete set of skills and traits is embedded in the original guide: Your Pareto Project is a reflection of your holistic strengths, including every “soft” or non-academic skill and trait. A presentation grade wouldn’t reflect that.
You have several options. The first is to share your work with your peers through Google Drive, Medium, etc., and to ask for specific feedback. This would work for written projects, slideshows, websites, and other artifacts that are accessible outside of a presentation environment. If you’re presenting, you’ll want to structure some follow-up discussion or feedback, which I’ll help you to do. It can be as immediate as a Q&A after you’ve presented or as in-depth as a formally-assigned writing prompt. As always, you need to know what you want out of that feedback.
Again, your grade is still a GAP score based on much more than just these projects. Your project’s guidelines should already be clear to you, too, which means what you complete will vary from person to person. You might have guidelines for publishing a story, sharing your progress on an essay, hanging your artwork — it depends.
For everyone, however, there will be a required pair of writing responses addressing your product and learning goals, respectively. You’ll be given those to work on during the two-week block of time, but only after you’re ready. The prompts will be universal, but how you approach your responses will be almost completely individualized.
See the above answer. You’ll also be given an English unit to complete interstitially, using the resources of the classroom to read, think, and write on a particular subject. It might be a series of units, too, depending on where we are in the year and what else you need. We will almost always have enough time during those two weeks to circle up for discussion, read a short story, do some test prep, etc., because not everyone in every class is presenting formally.
Examples of these concurrent units (to give you an idea of what to expect):
This guide has been adapted from the PDF and Google Doc used prior to 2018. The information here is most current and most correct. Those older guides might be interesting to some of you as examples of iterative instruction, though. You can see the evolution of ideas and language.
The Pareto Project is an iterative form of project-based learning that was inspired by 20Time and Genius Hour. It invites students to design and explore meaningful, personalized projects during the school year, with about 20% of the time we would otherwise dedicate to course work instead dedicated to Pareto Projects.
NOTE TO CURRENT STUDENTS (9/14/18): We won’t be starting these projects until October 1, but I need the post online for organizational purposes. Set it aside until it’s necessary.
Cover art to DJ Signify’s Sleep No More. Listen to “Kiddie Litter,” featuring Sage Francis, here. That song underscores, in a dark and surreal and imagistic way, the idea of being anaesthetized. Compare it to “Take Me Home,” by Brother Ali, which is a song about creating things and feeling pretty good about doing that.
This project is built on the “Genius Hour” framework, which you can read about here. It continues to evolve, showcasing the strengths of the classroom makerspace: the willingness to iterate, refine, and evolve an idea; the sense to reboot that idea when necessary; the openness to feedback of all kinds. Search this site for “Pareto Project,” and you can see the long arc of it.
The best place to start, however, is with testimonials and student work:
That showcases what is possible through these projects. And for each student, it will be projects, plural — one personal, one community-based, with the flexibility to expand and contract those projects as necessary.
Here is the guide to a successful Pareto Project:
Use the PDF if you have any formatting issues with the Google Docs version. When you open the document, you should notice the many hyperlinks, which indicate that this is designed to be read online, interstitially, with an opportunity to ask questions and research answers at your own pace. You can (and probably should) print individual pages, however, to help you workshop some of the steps.
This project is probably the best example of what a Humanities makerspace produces, because it frames the project with metacognitive writing and collaborative experimentation. It’s a prime example of how to unlock the real course. Take advantage of it.
Note: With some time and a lot of coffee, I hope to get a fully converted version of the guide online as an interactive post. This will be updated when and if that happens.
Cover art to DJ Signify’s Sleep No More. The track featuring Sage Francis is here. It’s one of the two songs I’d give you as a precursor to these projects, and the one that underscores, in a dark and surreal and imagistic way, the idea of being anaesthetized; the other one is just about creating things and feeling pretty good about doing that.
Your predecessors spent the last six months of last year working on what we called Pareto Projects. It ended up showcasing the strengths of the classroom itself — the ability to iterate, refine, and evolve an idea; the sense to reboot when necessary; the openness to student feedback — but it also took a long time to find itself, pedagogically speaking. Search the site for “Pareto Project,” and you can see the long arc of it.
You get to start now, in September, with everything in one place. Here we go:
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That’s the only guide you need to launch your own project. We are going to try to keep it digital, since so much of it requires you to click links and take notes separately. Here is the always-updated Google Docs version:
That guide has also been placed in the resources section of Google Classroom, and you’ll have another copy of it with the first week’s assignment. That assignment is to hammer out your initial project idea using the resources in the guide, your peers, and your teachers — and not just me, by the way.
The formal assignments for this project will, like all formal assignments, be posted to Google Classroom. That will include sketching out your schedule, filling out a Google Form, making a copy of a blueprint and completing it, and a few more things. You have to read the guide to figure it out, and that will require you to work together and work diligently.
This is probably the best example you’ll find all year of how to unlock the real course. Let’s see what we can do.
This is the original guide we used to set up your Pareto Projects:
Click here to read the updated Google Doc.
When I built that guide, the goal was to split your projects into two rounds, which you can see in the original calendar. We also set “deliverable” deadlines, focusing on what you could create and present, in writing or in person, by certain dates.
A couple of months later, I’d like to shift the calendar for these projects. Here is the updated version, which you’ve seen in class and online already:
Course Calendar
Remember that our shift to a GAP score every three weeks shifted our specific lessons and assignments a little bit, and that also applies to your Pareto Projects. We will now take one Friday every three weeks to check in on your progress. On those days, you will be in the iLC, where you will be able to spread out and use those resources as you see fit.
Remember, too, that you have spent a considerable amount of time in this course working on organization. When we meet in the iLC on those designated Fridays, you are responsible for setting the agenda and being productive. You must bring your own device, for instance, since we will no longer have a class set of Chromebooks. You must plan in advance for anything else you’ll need.
To help get you in that frame of mind, we have reserved the iLC for every Friday in March. We need to explore that space and see what it offers us in terms of collaborative and innovative learning. That means that you should plan to bring everything you need directly to the iLC, not Room 210, on the following dates:
You will be able to choose to focus on anything course-related while we are in the iLC, but there are assignments and checkpoints associated with certain Fridays. It’s like everything else in here: There is tremendous freedom and a precise structure. You need both.
Your new deadline for these projects is June 2. On that date, you will finish your projects and begin talking to us about what’s next. You might present to your peers, publish an essay, launch a YouTube channel — we will figure out what fits your work at that time.
For the first Friday after our shift — March 3 — you need to assess the state of your project. Answer the following questions:
#4 can be something you write now, on Thursday, in preparation for the iLC, or something you write over the weekend, looking back at your work on Friday. Write your answers in a Google Doc and attach it to the Google Classroom assignment that probably led you to this post.
Ask questions about this work or the Pareto Project overall in the comments below.
It’s never a bad idea or a waste of time to look over the instruction manual for something, even if you’ve already started using it. You might find some clarity you didn’t have or notice a function he didn’t see the first time. Here is the instruction manual1 for your Pareto Projects:
Click here to read the updated Google Doc.
When I built that guide, the goal was to split your projects into two rounds, which you can see in the original calendar. We also set “deliverable” deadlines, focusing on what you could create and present, in writing or in person, by certain dates.
A couple of months later, I’d like to shift the calendar for these projects. Here is the updated version, which you’ve seen in class and online already:
Course Calendar
Remember that our shift to a GAP score every three weeks shifted our specific lessons and assignments a little bit, and we’ll extend that soft reboot to your Pareto Projects. We will now take one Friday every three weeks to check in on your progress. On those days, you will be in the iLC, where you will be able to spread out and use those resources as you see fit.
Remember, too, that you have spent a considerable amount of time in this course working on organization. When we meet in the iLC on those designated Fridays, you are responsible for setting the agenda and being productive. You must bring your own device, for instance, since we will no longer have a class set of Chromebooks. You must plan in advance for anything else you’ll need.
To help get you in that frame of mind, we have reserved the iLC for every Friday in March. We need to explore that space and see what it offers us in terms of collaborative and innovative learning. That means that you should plan to bring everything you need directly to the iLC, not Room 210, on the following dates:
You will be able to choose to focus on anything course-related while we are in the iLC, but there are assignments and checkpoints associated with certain Fridays. It’s like everything else in here: There is tremendous freedom and a precise structure. You need both.
Your new deadline for these projects is June. Note that there is no date attached to that deadline. At the start of the month of June, we will use one of the designated Pareto Fridays to talk about presentations, publishing, final essays, final reports, and so on — the potential artifacts that will tie together the work you’ve been doing.
Because those artifacts will differ from student to student, we can’t set a specific deadline for everyone right now. We can only say that you will spend June finishing up these projects. In the meantime, you should revisit the original blueprint you completed for your project, noting that it has been updated to reflect our new calendar:
Pareto Project: Blueprint
What you “deliver” on each designated Pareto Friday will differ from project to project, but you should approach those deadlines with an eye toward producing something. The idea of “finishing” the projects will be refined as we move forward, too. For some of you, June will be about reviewing your goals and your success in meeting those goals. for others, this project will be a labor of love, and it will continue into the summer and into next year. in the latter case, “finishing” will mean something quite different.
For the first Friday after our shift — March 3 — you need to assess the state of your project. Answer the following questions:
Write your answers in a Google Doc and set it aside, using your new system of organization to keep track of it. Finish it over the weekend. You will be asked to submit those answers next week, and you will have only a portion of a single class to do that. You will go to Room 210, the assignment will be posted to Google Classroom after the bell rings, and then you will need to find your answers to those questions and submit them inside of five minutes or so. Among other things, this is a test of your ongoing organizational efforts and your ability to invest in these instructional posts enough to figure out what to do.
Ask questions about this work or the Pareto Project overall in the comments below.
For lack of a better metaphor. Orwell would disapprove. ↩