Edtech Throwdown Episode 225:  5 Fresh Projects to Beat Student Fatigue

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 225 called 5 Fresh Projects to Beat Student Fatigue. In this episode, we’ll tackle one of the negative side effects of project-based curricula - students doing the same projects over and over.  Listen in for 5 new project ideas that your students definitely have never seen before. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, Check it out.

Segment 1:

Tired of student eye rolls and complaints about the same projects that they’ve done a million times over?  All our creative ideas from 8 years ago are starting to feel stale (podcasts, videos, stop motion, room escapes, etc)

Nick just had this happen his stop motion slides project.

Segment 2:  

1. Soundscape:  Students research a pivotal historical event or local cultural turning point and produce a 3D binaural soundscape using free digital audio workstations (like BandLab, YouTube Creator Studio, Zapsplat, Google Vids). Instead of writing an essay, they script voiceovers in historical character, record ambient foley sound effects, and lay down music accurate to the era.
2. Deliverable: An interactive audio track
3. Bonus:   Pair it with a spatial map where listeners wear headphones and "walk through" the scene as it unfolds in surround sound.
4. Tabletop Escape the Room:  Rather than presenting on a historical conflict or civic crisis (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis, Apollo 13, or the Silk Road trade blockades), students build a playable, tabletop escape-room box. Players must decode primary source documents, solve mechanical/mathematical ciphers, and make strategic choices under a countdown timer to resolve the historical event.
5. Deliverable: A self-contained physical box filled with customized lockboxes, primary source puzzle artifacts, a rulebook, and a branching narrative outcome tree based on player decisions.
6. Physical Body Models:  Students use their bodies or multiple bodies to model scientific processes, mathematical equations and operations or events in history.  The models can move or be static, funny or serious.  They must be accurate.  Chemistry bonding as an example.
7. Deliverable:  Record the models and edit into a 3 minute max video for an in-class watch party
8. Hyperlocal Issues Mini Pod Expose:  Students investigate an invisible, hyper-local physical system in their immediate town that people take for granted—such as where municipal stormwater actually drains, how local restaurant grease is recycled, or the history of an unmarked piece of local infrastructure.
9. Deliverable: A polished 5-minute investigative podcast episode featuring recorded field interviews, ambient soundscapes, and an annotated script citing civic documents and expert sources.
10. Social Media Design:  Students design their own social media platform that only allows certain types of themes and posts.  It should be content based somehow.  For example, this is the social media platform for artists, or for young scientists, etc.
11. Deliverable: A mockup of a standard profile page for the platform that features the basic design, titles, names, and types of posts.  Sample posts should be included.

Edtech Throwdown: 

Vote on twitter @edtechthrowdown and under the pinned post on the profile.

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Music Credits:

• Intro and Outro Music-American Idle - RKVC
• Segment Identifiers-Duck in the Alley - TrackTribe
• Edtech Throwdown-Born a Rockstar (Instrumental) - NEFEX

Need a Presenter?

As experienced presenters and content creators, you can contact Nick and Guise to speak at your school, event, or conference. They can customize a workshop that meets your organization’s unique time and content needs. While no topic is out of bounds, we are best known for sessions on:

• AI For Teachers, Admin, and Parents
• 1:1 Chromebook Integration
• EdTech Throwdown
• TargetED Learning
• Gamification (Badge Systems)
• Game-Based Learning (Escape Rooms, Amazing Race, and more)
• Google apps and extensions
• Personalized learning and Choice Boards
• Teacher productivity (Lesson Planning, Online Grading. and Feedback)
• Digital content creation
• Student Podcasting
• Screencasting
• Flipped Classroom
• Student-Centered Learning