Week Five | 5/25–5/29
Week Six | 6/1–6/5
Final Project: Step #6 | The Final Project
In the original plan for your Senior Talk, you were asked to sign up for a specific date, time, and location for your presentation. That sign-up document still exists, but it won’t work for us now — not even if we are lucky enough to return to the high school before the end of the year.
Instead, you must use these two weeks, from May 25 through June 5, to finalize your project in a way that makes sense for you.
One note: Because everything you do will have a digital component — video, writing, photos, etc. — you should base your work for these two weeks around the possibility of reaching out to a wider audience. Remember the guiding ideas of project-based learning:
A public product makes your project authentic in a way nothing else can. You are not required to share your work, of course, but you are required to consider the possibility.
Anyone still doing a presentation can use these two weeks to film and submit it, and you’ll follow the guidelines laid out in Week Four for length and timing. Everyone else will need to think divergently and collaboratively.
Some possible questions to get you started:
- Could you publish your project to a social media account? How does that help your purpose?
- Could you showcase your project through an essay on a site like Medium?
- Will you have a video that could be posted to YouTube? How could you share that link to broaden your audience?
- What other artifacts could you create to showcase your project?
You should use the comment section of this post to brainstorm possibilities. Look again at that rundown of project-based learning: This is an opportunity for choice and authenticity about a project you’ve designed and built. What could you do during these two weeks?
You should also consider how you can involve a public audience, however large or small, in the critique and revision of your work. Critique and revision are part of these two weeks. You want a final product, but that final product can be a living thing that continues to grow.
Let’s say, as an example, that you are designing a digital town hall to tackle racism — a project that very much may happen — and will have an online meeting with a group of students as a final product. Could you share a video of that town hall afterward? Could you involve local newspapers? How about national journalists?
This is your chance to do something remarkable, and you don’t have to wait until May 25 to start. Add your thoughts below when you’re ready.