Albany Senior High School/Impact Projects

'NOTE: The Albany Senior High School impact project documentation contained in these sections is now documented internally in the staff team drive. It has been updated for the new impact project curriculum in 2019 The documentation contained here in wikieducator will continue here as legacy documents and may be of interest to people. It is the culmination of impact project work from 2010 - 2018.'

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There is really only one way to learn how to do something, and that is to do it. (Prof R Schank.)

Igniting Passions
Students of today enter an increasingly globalised world where they must be technologically literate, good communicators, great collaborators. The new work environment requires responsibility and self-management, as well as interpersonal and project-management skills that demand teamwork and leadership,' (adapted from Pearlman, 2005).

Introduction
You will not have to wait until you leave school to realise your dreams and passions. Impact projects provide you with the opportunity and space to take charge of your own learning to do just that. You will be able to deepen your specialist subject understanding and even go beyond what can be offered by the school curriculum to enrich your learning and your community.

Impact projects are highly structured, project-based learning experiences that you develop in teams or individually with guidance from your mentors at school and in consultation with experts in the community. Through these collaborations you will develop the skills, attributes and networks needed for success now and beyond school. On completion you will present your project and evidence of your learning journey to an audience in an engaging, authentic way. You and your community will evaluate your final product and learning against criteria based on SOLOs taxonomy and the four principles of successful impact projects. These criteria are developed to measure the level of your success and may also include, but is not limited to, NCEA standards.

Check out which will introduce you to some of the structures, processes and resources that will maximise the quality of your learning and impact project product at ASHS.


 * Impact Project Curriculum Plan
 * The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

References:


 * Why teaching with project-based learning?
 * Implementing Project-based learning

How it all works
Structuring impact projects for maximum learning and high quality products involves three distinct phases: Learning about these three phases and what you can do in them gives the greatest chance for a project's success, both in terms of learning and the product you create. Throughout the three phases, you will work with your mentor and group members with a variety of tools and processes to get the most out of your project.
 * 1) proposal
 * 2) progressing the plan
 * 3) presenting and evaluating.



Impact projects alongside inter/national awards
Impact projects have the flexibility to work alongside other award systems, for example CREST and Duke of Edinburgh.

An example of this is demonstrated in the following document outlining how DoE/Impact works in our school.

NCEA
In addition to this your project can also be used as evidence to achieve appropriate NCEA standards. You should talk to your project mentor, tutor and specialist subject teachers about how you can make this happen.