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2010 G21 Faire Winners Announced

In 2008, Goochland began a new professional development initiative centered around twenty-first century skills. This “Goochland 21” program, more commonly now referred to as “G21,” brings a project-based perspective to each classroom each year by asking students to make something. Teachers plan the projects in consultation with their building principal, Goochland’s supervisor of instructional technology John Hendron, and instructional technology resource teachers. While many plans include technology as a tool, technology, per se, isn’t a requirement. “These projects start with a foundation of our Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL). But unlike a typical lesson, the projects require students create a product. This could be anything from a physical model, a performance, a piece of music, or even multimedia such as digital artwork or a podcast episode,” says Hendron.

Goochland is not alone in its focus on twenty-first century learning. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a national organization which promotes learning by challenging students with a set of skills industry leaders are continually identifying as essential for workplace success today and tomorrow. Goochland’s director for secondary education Thomas DeWeerd had this to say about the G21 plans: “These plans really are an extension of what we were already doing here in Goochland, with our technology goals for teachers. But we have come to that point now where technology for the sake of technology has passed. We’ve tried to raise the bar here and put technology in its rightful place—at improving instruction and student success.”

Goochland’s assistant superintendent Pete Gretz shares what he sees in the G21 initiative: “What’s so exciting to see is that the label, ‘G 21’ has come to stand here for excellence. Teachers are absolutely on board with wanting to provide the best educational experiences for our students… G21 helps us focus some of our energy on quality teaching by letting both students and teachers experience project-based learning. You will see that when you look at our four master projects from 2009-2010!” In order to recognize the excellence that is reached through these projects, Goochland last year created the G21 Faire. Teachers are invited to share their G21 projects with a panel of judges, who seek out the best exemplars of 21st century learning. This year, the panel identified four outstanding projects.

• GMS Helps Haiti, by Elizabeth Curfman at Goochland Middle School
• Let Freedom Ring, by Jamie-Ellen Spessard with students from all three Goochland elementary schools
• Cultural Identity, by Renae Townsend at Goochland Middle School
• The Goochland Project, by Kimberly Berry at Goochland High School

For her project, Beth Curfman wanted to give her students a cause to excited about. The earthquake crisis in Haiti seemed to knock at their door. One reviewer said of this project: “This is an excellent example of getting our students involved in real-world issues and letting them figure out how to be part of the solution.” Another commenter said, “I am humbled by the efforts of the students. This is a real world scenario and the students have actively partaken in an unbelievable opportunity. I loved the pictures and blogs to share their experience.”

Curfman's goals included wanting her students to create their own global outreach project in an effort to learn more about current events that impact the world. You can view details of this project online through a website created by students.

Jamie-Ellen Spessard’s G21 project started as a telecollaborative project from a graduate class she took. “This project is designed to provide elementary school students the opportunity to explore a big concept that is also a founding concept of our nation — freedom.” To make things happen, Spessard used elementary ITRT Amanda Henley to utilize the Moodle course management system to connect students between Randolph, Goochland, and Byrd elementary schools. She also got buy-in and participation from a number of Goochland teachers, including Ms. McTamaney, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Hogue, Ms. Mask, Mr. Tomlin, Ms. Watts, Ms. Holzbach, Mrs. Hawk, and Mrs. Foreman. One commenter said, “It was wonderful to pull this all together into one celebration with the community.” Another commenter added this: “I loved the way the videos created by Ms. Hogue’s class. They really showed the student’s understanding of freedom and the struggle of some groups to be free and equal.”

Spessard's project was recently recognized by the special interest group for online learning (SIGOL) of ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. Her G21 was awarded third-place honors from among other registrants from across the globe. Artifacts from this project are posted on Spessard’s blog.

Renae Townsend works with students for whom English is not their first language. Ms. Townsend recognizes that students she serves are not only challenged by language, but by cultural issues. Important to Townsend in this year’s G21 was for her students to better understand their own culture and cultural identity. “[This project] was very much a real-world experience for these students! I loved this project!” one reviewer told us.

Using read/write tools already available to teachers, Townsend’s students prepared interview podcasts with their elders. These interviews were later published on Townsend’s blog, and students in Townsend’s class and beyond responded to the interviewers through blog comments. Another reviewer told us: “What an extraordinary learning experience you have provided these students.” Townsend’s project gave students a very positive experience with social media, reinforcing digital citizenship skills. Likewise, they were able to preserve the perspectives of their relatives, akin to the style epitomized by National Public Radio’s story corps project. The student podcasts were recently showcased at Goochland Middle School.

High School teacher Kimberly Berry started off the year with a new class at GHS, centered around digital visualization. Using Google Sketchup, the plan was to create expert designers in her class. But soon enough, the class paved the way for a G21 project that involved every student, across each of her technology classes.

Berry’s project focused on students’ own environment, Goochland County. Her students not only photographed Goochland, illustrated Goochland, but they also designed logos to promote businesses in Goochland and—here’s the digital visualization part—reconstruct three-dimensional buildings in Goochland to showcase our community through Google Earth, a free 3D globe and atlas application from Google.

One commenter said, “This project epitomizes G21. It’s extraordinary that the teacher was able to tie-in this project into all of her classes. The theme gave a purpose to the learning kids accomplished.” Another commenter loved how this project took student work into the real world: “This Google Earth project and the student blog postings took students beyond Goochland and put their work out there for the world [to see].” You can learn more about Berry’s G21 project through her blog, including a video showing the Google Earth portion of the project filmed and edited by GHS teacher Bruce Montgomery that aired on News2 at GHS.

These four masters of twenty-first century learning will be recognized in August at the 2010-11 SY convocation exercises, with a captive audience of the Goochland County Public Schools family. At this event, one of these G21 Masters will be recognized for having the highest-scoring project. To learn more about the G21 framework, visit our G21 resources page.