Mastiff's concluding comment.
Finally for now, and I think I have mentioned this before, but students are never given truly long-term projects to work on. Because of the disjointed structure of the school-year curriculum, students often leave college having never in their lives worked on any single project for longer than two months—or, more realistically, three weeks (given last-minute cramming). This serves them poorly in the real world.
It has been said that American education is a mile wide and an inch deep. This is true. In fact, I would put it as a chief reason why students are not doing as well as they should be doing. The simple fact is that they have no in depth knowledge of key concepts. A long term project...such as power point presentation that is worked on over a period of three months....would give them this depth. Sadly, the standards of many states are written in such a way that a massive amount of information needs to be covered.
The problem here is that administrators and standards writers are focused on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (Knowledge and Comprehension) when they should be focused on the higher levels (Synthesis and Evaluation). If a student had a three month project to work on, they could start with the basic facts of a concept and develop a truly enduring understanding that would serve them in the real world.
Of course, a long term project is always best if done in a subject in which a student has interest. If a student could choose the subject matter, I wonder if the LTP (long term project) could be introduced as a mandatory assessment method. Perhaps it could be tailored to be similar to a Master's thesis or dissertation...appropriate, of course for age group. I could see students in 11th grade and 12th grade being required to do this. What a fantastic idea!
Thanks, Mastiff, for your comments. They certainly sparked a great deal of reflection and I really enjoyed writing this series!
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