Wow! What a fantastic day with the 4th and 5th graders at the Downtown School in Des Moines, Iowa! How can we expect students to be excited about learning about a topic when there is no understanding to speak or write from? How do you explain something like scuba diving without actually experiencing it?

Teri Arbogast and Tracey Donovan, two teachers at the Downtown School, have become powerful collaborators with Deborah Vail and me.  The two of us have been working together to support the development of Teri and Tracey’s classroom blog that contains student blogs within their site. It has been a slow learning experience, but we have all benefited so much in this collaborative process. The scuba diving experience provided a great opportunity to develop a project-based learning experience and generate excitement for students to launch their personal blogs.

Deb, an Instructional Technology Consultant at Heartland Area Education Agency, had the scuba diving certification,  experience, and connections to set up the project-based learning entry event. As part of the introduction to this experience, 4th and 5th grade students spent the morning scuba diving in Des Moines Public School’s Central Campus pool. Students were paired with one of the 5 certified divers (Deb being one of them) from across the metro that volunteered their time and expertise. Each student had ample time with a diver. They were fitted with the gear necessary for the experience and were given lessons on how to breath underwater using the strange feeling and sounding apparatus.

Aaron Cook, Video/Multimedia Technology Support Specialist from Heartland AEA,  joined us in the pool and was our underwater photographer. His photos and video are fantastic, providing artifacts for the classroom and student blogs from the underwater experience and perspective. The videos provide the visual as well as the underwater sounds of the breathing, bubbles and movements.

Downtown School Principal John Johnston joined us on the pool deck supporting and encouraging students in this new adventure. (Convincing some that they could breath underwater by using the equipment was very scary for many of them.) In addition to my photography from the pool deck, Channel 12, the DMPS tv station, was there to film the event as well, capturing both pictures and sounds of the day. Their media specialists took photos and interviewed many of the students about their “epic” scuba diving experience at the conclusion of our morning.

In the afternoon, Deb and I returned to the 4th and 5th grade classroom and helped students launch their blogs. We coached students through the process of uploading photos and posting of personal narratives of the event. It was an ideal entry event opportunity which will eventually blend rigorous content with technology, reading, writing, and science through this authentic learning experience. We can barely  imagine the questions that students will now generate that will take this experience to a whole new level of learning. This was the type of experience that students will remember for years to come.

As I conclude my reflections of this day, I want to include a special thank you to Leydens’ Dive Shop for providing certified divers to support the entry event of this project-based learning opportunity. The divers were professional, patient, and supportive of the students. They worked to make sure that all had a great learning experience. I also want to thank Des Moines Public Schools for the opportunity to have ongoing collaboration and learning with their outstanding teachers and for supporting this experience by providing DMPS Channel 12 media specialists.