The Second Discussion: Educational Projects

On the 4th of February we had the second discussion at our English speaking club. We discussed our project based learning. Some of our teachers have written interesting articles or have done translations on this issue. Several articles about successfully completed projects have been published in our school web site, but we can't say that there haven't been any difficulties. We wouldn't have discussed that question if we hadn't had any. The discussion was done in written compositions so that no student would influence another student with his/her opinion. In the result there were different opinions, but when we read these frankly written opinions, it turns out that everybody has the same aim: to improve their education, make it more effective and find ways to overcome their difficulties.     

Susanna Avetisyan

Now I am studying at High School of the “Mkhitar Sebastatsi” Educomplex and I think that it differs from other schools with its way of learning because it is project based. Here the students don’t use any text-books, copy-books and pens, and everybody is doing their tasks with note-books or net-books. Each student has his/her blog where he/she enters home tasks or does project work. I am a new comer at this school, and that is why my blog is not so rich in posts, but I have already done several projects about which I would like to speak. There are completed projects on H.Tumanyan and Gurgen Mahary’s works. I have written interesting essays in Russian, English and Philosophy. There is a tradition at this school: the New Year begins with a so called Digitech which is a review of what was done in the previous year. I have also written my Gigi-tale.

I think that project work is interesting, and the most important thing is that it can be safely kept for years. But on the other hand, I have to say that there are students who copy a text from the Internet and paste it in their blog without thinking and realizing anything. I would like our teachers to have special computer programs in Armenian to check whether the student has written the text himself or whether it has been taken from the Internet. I would also like our teachers to evaluate not only our final completed project in the blog but also our everyday work.        

 Narek Danielyan

At our school we study different subjects by doing projects. For me project work is very important. I did many projects in different subjects: for example, in English, History and Ecology. If you want to see them you can visit my blog www.nardaniel.wordpress.com

I am for projects because they give us a lot.

 Anna Mkrtchyan

One of the differences of our school from others is that our learning is project based. Sometimes it is interesting to do project work but it is not effective. Projects prevent us from getting knowledge. For example, I don’t understand the benefit of project work in Math.  I think that it is interesting to do projects in Armenian but we shouldn’t forget about grammar, or we should have additional hours of Armenian in our timetable. Our English project work was sometimes interesting with required results but I think our lessons would be more effective if we did normal lessons. In my opinion these projects play a symbolic role. We are not serious about doing projects. We are not engaged in serious research and creative work. 

Yeva Markosyan

Of course everything has its merits and demerits, but now I should speak about project based learning. So I think that we can't do project work in all subjects, for example we can't do project work in Math, but in fact we do it, and it's not really convenient, it's also not convenient to work with notebooks, we discussed it in the pervious topic. Now it's the end of the first term and we must do our project in Math but nobody knows how to do it. I think we should write our project in Math without notebooks or netbooks. Projects are useful for such subjects as the History of Art, English, History, Armenian language or literature but not only for Math. I have done some projects in English: for example, “Human Relationships”, My Future Profession” etc. I have also done projects in Art. But projects can only be part of our education and not the main thing. For example we can’t make our English grammar better only by doing projects.

Hovhannes Dallakyan

There are school subjects which are not convenient to do with project based method. There may be other methods for such subjects. For example, Maths and other subjects of precise sciences are not convenient to do with project based method, but English and Geography can be easily done with this method.

Our education will be better if the teachers check our home tasks every day. That will make lazy pupils work at home.