Big 11 PLC Meeting January 30th

This week (January 30th) we discussed what we wanted to do next in our progress toward integrating our students' learning in a multi-disciplinary way, centered around one project.

We talked about all of the things we could do to promote some type of improvement to Big 11 lake.
We weren't sure exactly how to do it, and discussed various possibilities until it came to us that we shouldn't be the ones to make this decision -the students were.

So we set about a plan to first determine what needed to be done at Big 11 (an assessment phase), then move the responsibility of coming up with a plan to student groups.

Each group would have to design a plan and outline how it was to be accomplished. They are to come up with an overall concluding vision and then describe in sequence what they would do to get to this vision. In creating their plans they would have to develop and utilize skills from many domains. They will need an understanding of government and the practical skills of communicating with professionals in policy making. This will involve how to address people in a professional manner and to communicate clearly and accurately. They will have have sound scientific analysis of the present situation and the changes they will be making; especially important, they will have to know what effect those changes will pose for the future of Big 11 lake. And in doing this they must be able to create clean cogent arguments in writing. They will have to be able to make calculations of the geometry of the area and things like the weight and volume of things that have to dealt with, so to speak, like soil or water.

Finally, we decided that that student groups would compete for the honor of making their presentation to the city.

And that's where we left off.