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The Project Zero Classroom is now full. Please consider joining us at another program.

 

The Project Zero Classroom 2008

July 28–August 2, 2008

 

About The Institute
Our rapidly changing world presents profound challenges for today’s educators. How do you best prepare young people for a future that is hard to imagine?

How do you create learning experiences that are engaging and exciting for children?

How do you teach for the kind of deep understanding and thought that allows people to solve complex problems and do work that is both excellent and innovative?

How do you encourage students to fall in love with learning?

The Project Zero Classroom 2008 (PZC) is designed to help practicing PreK-12 educators create classrooms, instructional materials, and out-of-school learning environments that address these challenges.


In a Project Zero Classroom teachers promote students’ efforts to understand important content, recognize and develop students’ multiple intellectual strengths, help students learn to think critically and creatively, and assess student work in ways that promote further learning. In a Project Zero Classroom teachers themselves are learners who model intellectual curiosity and rigor, interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry, and sensitivity to the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of learning.

Throughout the week, the institute addresses fundamental questions, such as:

• What are the components of an effective education for the world that students live in now and will live in— 10, 20, or 50 years from now?

• What is understanding, and how does it develop?

• What are the roles of reflection and assessment in student and teacher learning?

• How can participants share and pursue their understanding of Project Zero’s ideas with others after the institute?

Institute sessions are varied, interactive, and include full-group meetings (300 participants), mini-courses (10–45 people), and small study groups of under 20. Participants have many opportunities to talk informally with faculty and colleagues from around the world.

New Techniques For Improving Instruction
Participants in the institute learn to use various frameworks to look analytically at teaching and to make informed decisions about instruction. The program also helps participants develop new approaches to planning and carrying out instruction. Participants reaffirm and expand their repertoire of classroom techniques. Many opportunities are provided to discuss and compare experiences with others.

Who Should Attend
Although we strongly encourage participants to attend in teams so that they can reflect on ideas together both during and after the institute, individual participants are also welcome. In addition to PK-12 educators and administrators, pre-school teachers, teacher educators, and museum educators are also encouraged to attend.

Fluency In English Is Mandatory


Session Highlights
Plenary Sessions highlight both early and emerging ideas from Project Zero work and are presented by Howard Gardner, David Perkins, Steve Seidel and other senior staff.

Study Groups are created based on participant interests and offer an opportunity to reflect on applicability of ideas to individual practice.

Mini courses draw from the following topics:

• Teaching and assessing for understanding
• Multiple intelligences
• Learning in and through the arts
• Educating for the 21st Century
• Making thinking and learning visible
• Understanding of organizations


Faculty

Howard Gardner, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

howard gardner

Gardner served as the Co-Director of Project Zero for nearly 30 years, and currently serves as Chair of the Project Zero Steering Committee. For the last 13 years, in collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and other researchers at Project Zero, Gardner has been engaged in a study of Good Work; work that is at once excellent in quality and also responsive to the needs of broader society.

The project is now working with young people in secondary schools and colleges in an effort to nurture good work. Gardner's most recent books are: Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons and Five Minds for the Future. With several colleagues, he recently published Responsibility at Work.


David Perkins, Senior Co-Director of Project Zero, is Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

david perkins

His newest book is King Arthur’s Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations. He is also the author of The Eureka Effect, Smart Schools, Outsmarting IQ, Knowledge as Design, and several other books and many articles. He has helped develop instructional programs and approaches for teaching understanding and thinking, including initiatives in Sweden, South Africa, Israel, and Latin America. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow.


Steve Seidel, Director of Project Zero and the Arts in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

steven seidel

Seidel is the Patricia Bauman and John Landrum Bryant Lecturer in Arts in Education. He has worked in the areas of arts and education for over 30 years. With more than 15 years teaching in high schools, he joined Project Zero in 1988, working on projects in arts education, alternative assessment, project-based curriculum, and school reform. He is currently a Principal Investigator for several projects, including Making Learning Visible and The Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It.


Study Group and Mini-Course Faculty, consist of nationally and internationally acclaimed consultants, authors, presenters, researchers, and practitioners.


General Information

Program Fees
The program fee of $2100 includes tuition, all instructional materials, and social events. Participants receive a certificate of completion and a letter confirming clock hours of instruction. Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses.

Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Payment or a purchase order must be received within thirty days of registration and prior to the program start. Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses; please wait for payment confirmation before making travel arrangements.

Cancellation Policy
Cancellations must be made in writing. Full refunds will be granted until June 27, 2008. Cancellations between June 28 and July 9 will be subject to a $250 administrative fee.

Cancellations after July 9 , 2008 and no-shows are subject to full payment.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education reserves the right to cancel the program or change faculty at its discretion. In the unlikely case of the program changes, the school is not responsible for non-refundable travel arrangements or other planning costs incurred.

Conference Location
The conference will be held at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Accommodations
Hotel accommodations will be made available to participants at a reduced rate.
Travel and hotel accommodations are the responsibility of the individual participant.

The Inn at Harvard
$195/ night plus tax. Single or Double. Reservations: 800-458-5886. Code: Project Zero. Reserve before July 3, 2008.

Harvard Square Hotel
$170/ night plus tax. Single or Double. Reservations: 800-458-5886. Code: Project Zero. Reserve before July 3, 2008

Harvard Dormitory
Participants may choose to stay in a Harvard Undergraduate Dormitory. Each participant is assigned a single room and shares a bathroom. While housing facilities are comfortable, they are spartan. Linens and daily housekeeping are provided. The cost of room and breakfast is $115 per night.

Further Information
800-545-1849 • ppe@gse.harvard.edu

The Harvard Graduate School of Education affirms the right of all individuals to equal treatment in education without regard to race, age, religion, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, handicap, national origin, or any other considerations that are extraneous to effective performance. The Harvard Graduate School of Education will accommodate anyone with disabilities

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