Gold Standards

In class, we have focused on two driving questions, that have shaped our entire project. Our first question is: Is urban renewal/revitalization a realistic goal for Birmingham, and our second driving question is: How could/would you change the city of Birmingham Al to be a thriving urban area? Our class has repeatedly turned back to these questions, and have dug deep into what these questions are really asking. Our goal was to be able to answer these questions.

We were given two groups, one in which was our ¨home¨ group and one in which was our ¨jigsaw¨ group. Our Jigsaw groups we worked with for two days, and we became experts on a topic, took notes, and basically just learned everything there was to know about the topic. After those two days had passed, we returned to our home group and we each had a different topic and shared what we had learned; now we had learned about four new topics. Afterwards, we had to make a brochure about a certain topic we had learned that revolved around Birmingham, and it had to be able to draw people to the city and highlight the fundamental highlights of the city.

When thinking about if something is authentic, you need to consider if it is real and genuine. When relating to learning, it needs to relate to the real world. When choosing what to do our project on, we chose to revive Birmingham because it was relatable and authentic. When doing this project, it helps us become ready for authentic situations is the real world that will help us become ready for some of our future careers. Being authentic boosts our learning and knowledge while motivating us to do better. In class, we created several different products to make our final product authentic and original. Many things such as Canvas, Tinker cads, and many other digital learning programs helped us make our project as authentic as possible.

As students, we were able to decide and choose different aspects of our project like the solutions, tabs, website, and brochures. In the solutions, we chose ideas that we thought we could do in order to fix Birmingham. For example, we said we could start revitalizing Birmingham by one neighborhood at a time. In the tabs, we gathered information on each topic and put the information under the tabs. In the website, after we gathered information and reflected on our work, we made a website to teach people about revitalizing Birmingham. In the brochures, we had a specific topic that we had to have information on. We made brochures to inform classmates about our topic.

As mentioned in the ¨Sustained Inquiry¨ tab, we had groups that made a brochure on a topic that revolved around the city of Birmingham, and once we had finished, we passed our brochures around, and we were able to reflect on others brochures, as well as get honest feedback on our own. In addition to making the brochures,we also had journals that we had to reflect on our previous work, and answer questions on what we had previously done, or what we planned to do in the future in order to help revitalize Birmingham Alabama.

In the process of making our website, each and everyone student in our classroom has pulled their own weight. During which, everyone would re-write, or re-word others information. We would give honest feedback, and always offer a helping hand to those who were struggling. We edited each others tabs in order to make them better, and sound more professional. In addition to editing each others tab, we made a city block using tinkercad, and had in open discussion on who´s we liked best, and what we could add or take away.