The Story Behind the Lighthouse Project

The project shown here is the work of one student who researched the history of lighthouses and then planned and organized a school wide fund-raiser to help preserve lighthouses.

The History of Inventions is a program that the Science cluster teacher developed recently. Twenty-five students participated in the program and each selected an invention to research using the school’s access to a Web site developed by Smith College called “The Museum of Ancient Inventions.” The majority of this year-long project was completed during school time. The teacher met with the students once a week for 45 minutes during the school’s “club” time, as well as on an as-needed basis. The students had access to the Internet, computer software, and reference books, and obtained the assistance of experts from outside the school to research their invention. Their project proposals had to be approved by the principal and the teacher. The students could work individually or in groups of two or three. Once the background information was completed, the students reconstructed the invention.

Using the resources available, the student who completed this project researched and learned about the history and importance of lighthouses. She was motivated to contact the Lighthouse Preservation Society for further information and then decided to investigate fund-raiser options that would benefit lighthouses.

After careful consideration of all fund-raiser options, the student decided to plan, organize, schedule and advertise a school wide raffle to raise funds to help preserve lighthouses. She planned the logistics of running a raffle and realized the need for additional help from other students in the class.

The student also identified the materials needed to build a model of a lighthouse, which became part of the school’s Museum of Inventions.

At this point, the student wrote a speech, which was presented over the school’s public address system outlining the plans for the raffle. She posted the rules and regulations of the fund-raiser outside the classroom, and also designed and produced the raffle tickets.

The student sold the tickets for six weeks. She and her friends went from class to class selling the raffles, at first on a daily basis, and then twice a week. She maintained daily tally sheets of all the money collected by grade as well as cumulative records. A tally chart was posted outside the classroom and updated weekly for the school to observe the progress made.

The documentation presented from this project is not a comprehensive record of all work done as part of the project. It would be neither reasonable nor appropriate to ask students to keep detailed written records of every aspect of a project. This would defeat part of the purpose of Applied Learning which is for students to put their academic learning to work and to learn from projects that connect what they do at school to the demands of the twenty-first century workplace. Some of these standards lend themselves to assessment through observation and other less formal methods rather than through written work.

This project illustrates a standard-setting performance for the following parts of the standards:
c	Problem Solving: Plan and organize an event or an activity.
a	Communication: Make an oral presentation.
b	Communication: Compose correspondence.
c	Communication: Publish information.
a	Information: Gather information.
b	Information: Use information technology.
b	Learning and Self-management: Keep records of work activities.
a	Working With Others: Work with others to complete a task.

The student reflected on the project as a whole, and the process she used to organize the fund-raiser. She also made suggestions to other students about effective practices which could be used to carry out similar projects. She designed a reflective questionnaire for the students who assisted her in the execution of the fund-raiser.

The project raised $580.00 for the Lighthouse Preservation Society. Following an oral presentation to her science class, the student designed and disseminated an informative brochure to the entire student body.

The written work produced as part of Applied Learning projects commonly contains some errors. Documentation of these projects includes notes, journal entries and plans that students produced as working documents for their personal use. These kinds of documents were not prepared with the expectation of eventual publication and they have not been revised for inclusion in this book.

It is expected that finished work produced as part of an Applied Learning project will contain virtually error free writing.

What the work shows
b Information Tools and Techniques: The student uses information technology to assist in gathering, organizing, and presenting information; that is, the student:

The student acquired information about different inventions from the Smith College Web site. This was a preliminary activity to help the students decide what invention they would like to concentrate on.
The student accessed information to support her research from electronic data bases including Grolier’s Encyclopedia.

a Information Tools and Techniques: The student gathers information to assist in completing project work; that is, the student:
• identifies potential sources of information to assist in completing the project;
• uses appropriate techniques to collect the information, e.g., considers sampling issues in conducting a survey;
• distinguishes relevant from irrelevant information;
• shows evidence of research in the completed project.

In addition to data base sources, the student identified relevant sources of information, such as an issue of the magazine Cobblestone that focused on America’s lighthouses.
These extracts from the student’s project log include notes on relevant information about lighthouses obtained from appropriate sources such as the library, The Lighthouse Preservation Society, and a variety of Web sites.

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