Tonight's BOE meeting at Beck Center

[Edward Favre]

The 10th grade students of Lakewood High School’s 2.0 program will be exhibiting their work from “The WikiSeat Project” at the Beck Center for the Arts on Monday, Feb. 6 from 6-8 p.m. The project required the students to design and build a chair by hand. On display will be the final results of a unique learning experience that called for students to engage in ideas surrounding design concepts, the experiential learning cycle, and the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Nicolas Weidinger, a designer and professor at Ohio State University and creator of the WikiSeat concept, described the project in this way:

"A WikiSeat is a three-legged stool that is built by hand. Each WikiSeat starts with a 'Catalyst' that acts as a central support structure. The creator of a WikiSeat has the freedom to gather materials and find their own methods to build the seat."


The “Catalyst” is a small metal support structure made of angle iron that is constructed in such a way as to form a three-legged chair. Each student was given a “Catalyst” at the start of the project and instructed to design a chair using the “Catalyst”. Class time was spent on considerations of form/function, the design process, and readings on the nature of learning and self-determination as outlined by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essays, “The American Scholar” and “Self-Reliance”.

The results of the quarter-long project were chairs that reflect the unique sensibilities and interests of each of the approximately 70 students in Sean Wheeler’s 10th grade American Literature classes. The styles range from a sleek to frilly to spartan.

“This project, for us, is a way of exploring Emerson's ideas. The students are doing instead of getting, making instead of regurgitating, and engaged rather than being passive participants in their learning,” said Wheeler.

Please join the students on Monday, Feb. 6 at The Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Ave., as students display their completed Wikiseats and share the challenges and highlights of a very unique learning experience.

Lakewood High’s 2.0 programs is a pilot project of 9th and 10th graders in the core subjects that focuses on project-based, real-world learning that uses technology to connect students with other learners around the world and to help collaborate and share their work with each other.

[Sean Wheeler]

My students are very excited to share their work. Please come by and check out the amazing work of our students. As I sit here surrounded by these Wikiseats before they get loaded into the truck for the move from LHS to the Beck Center, I can't wait for people to see what our students can do.

More info and reflections on the process can be found on the following pages from the teachinghumans.blogspot.com blog

The Wikiseat Project: So You're Going to Build A What in English Class?
http://teachinghumans.blogspot.com/2011/09/wikiseat-project-so-youre-going-to.html

Wikiseat Napkin Drawings
http://teachinghumans.blogspot.com/2011/09/wikiseat-napkin-drawings.html

The Wikiseat Project - Getting the "Catalysts" and Emerson's "The American Scholar"
http://teachinghumans.blogspot.com/2011/09/wikiseat-project-getting-catalysts-and.html

The Wikiseat Project: Emersonian Wikiseat Manifestos. ( If you want to make a chair out of TVs, make a chair out of TVs.)
http://teachinghumans.blogspot.com/2011/09/wikiseat-project-emersonian-wikiseat.html

The Wikiseat Project: The First Wikiseats are in!
http://teachinghumans.blogspot.com/2011/10/wikiseat-project-first-wikiseats-are-in.html

Lakewood has some amazing kids. Please come share their success tonight.