 On this week's ESU8 Wednesday webinar, I'm excited to share with you a story that was first shared this past summer at ISTI in Chicago. At an event sponsored by Digital Promise and Apple, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Challenge-Based Learning. And I'd like to share with you this story of the journey of the past 10 years, looking back at the rich history of CBL and celebrating the events, the people, the impact of this movement, as well as looking forward and seeing what relevance it has in our classrooms today. My first involvement with Challenge-Based Learning was over a decade ago this month. A group of visionary thought leaders at Apple brought together 20 educators from across the United States and we gathered together to think forward on teaching, learning, engagement, and 21st century skills. But the very first thing that we did together as a group was watch a documentary film called Blind Sight. And this told the story of Eric Weinmeier, a blind adventurer, and a school for blind children in Tibet. And their true story of going together on a mountain climb up the side of Mount Everest. Even though it wasn't necessarily a story about schooling, it had everything to do with learning. And it became somewhat of a metaphor for our work moving forward. Eric, Sabria, and the blind children overcame obstacle after obstacle, who we thought we had challenges in our classrooms. They persevered, they overcame all odds. That's exactly what Challenge-Based Learning has done for our schools and our classrooms. Others might have thought that CBL is not equipped for the journey or aiming for an apex to daunting, but success is defined in the journey, not the destination. And this global collaboration has yielded tremendous success with momentum that continues to carry forward into the future. So for the next few minutes, let me be your guide, as I recap the highlights of this learning expedition we know as CBL. Even though we say this is the 10th anniversary, it's important to remember that the Foundation for Challenge-Based Learning actually dates back to 1985 and the ACOT study, or Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow. It was during this 12 years of longitudinal research that laid the foundation for what we now know about how students learn best, especially when technology is involved. Fast forward to 2007, when Apple launched the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Today, or ACOT 2 study, where enough about all this talk about classrooms of tomorrow, what can we do today? From this research came the six design principles, critical components for successful schools that truly act as guiding principles in all the work we do. So it was from this body of research that came the call for a, for example, curriculum project. If we hold these design principles true, then what would they look like in a high school classroom today? A learning framework evolved from this work, meant to be flexible with various entry points, and the focus was always on a community of learners where students drive the questions, the investigations, and teachers work as co-collaborators in the learning process. A key differentiator of CBL was the relevance of learning. Real challenges were tackled from the world around us, and genuine solutions were put into action to create a measurable impact. To see if this framework would hold true, a pilot study was launched with ninth grade classrooms in six United States schools. Research was compiled by the New Media Consortium, and it proved that CBL was in fact effective. Students were engaged, teachers were sold, and 21st century skills were being developed. And the stories began to spread, and CBL began to evolve. The graphic for the framework was modified to reflect the cyclical process so critical to success, the ongoing nature of working through challenges. But what about outside of the high school years? Primary, middle school, would the same thing hold true? What about high ed and adult learners? Well, that was the focus of, one of the focuses of the 2011 CBLI, or Challenge-Based Learning Implementation Project. This time schools from a broader international base came together to again put CBL to the test. And again, the results were overwhelmingly positive. The evolution of Challenge-Based Learning always had at its core a strong push to be simple. This is evident in the latest framework graphic created upon the move to CBL's current home at Digital Promise, where just three key phases encompass the entire process, engage, investigate, and act. And it reiterated that challenges are everywhere. So many people helped propel this work forward. So many stories have come into existence, impacting communities everywhere. Apple Distinguished Educators were a large part of this, publishing their stories on the Apple Bookstore, stories like Adam Brice's School in Australia, The Resilience Challenge, Mark Lobb's Share, and Arizona School of the Arts, The Booth Project, bringing about the idea of constant reflection for students in authentic ways. Challenge-Based Learning across Indonesia, the book by Jane Ross. One need only do a simple search for Challenge-Based Learning online, on Twitter, in the bookstore. And so many resources, so many stories can be shared. This was certainly true for my students and in my rural Nebraska community, from PE classes developing life-long, healthier habits for kids that they hopefully still practice today, to student activism for undocumented citizens, to sustainable programs to feed needy families in our school, to student commitments to stay alcohol and drug free. Our students have truly become activists. They leave our small town school armed with skills that matter and help propel them forward. And continuing to make a difference in the world around them, even after school is complete. We're a more extensive toolkit, including many big ideas and sample challenges that you can launch tomorrow. Be sure to visit challenge-basedlearning.org. But the story doesn't end here. Just like blind site, it's not about standing on the summit. It's more meaningful to celebrate the journey, the experiences, the lessons learned, the life-long impact on ourselves, our students, and our schools. CBL was and is the driving force behind this. And it has made a world of difference for us. It's a culture. It's our culture. It's community pride. It's learning that really matters. And I know this kind of story is not limited to just our neck of the woods. Today we are here to celebrate CBL, challenge-based learning, to appreciate the impact on our community of learners. And most importantly, to remember that our work as educators is far from over. We know that challenges exist everywhere. They uniquely present themselves to our students. They work against our daily efforts as educators. Who among us will continue to rise to the challenge? So how can we get started with the CBL framework in our classrooms? Engage, investigate, and act. Just the simple framework will provide an efficient and an effective way to support your learning so that you can identify, understand, and solve authentic challenges together so that your students can take informed action and really make a difference with what they learned. Just give you a little bit more of a breakdown of those three phases. Starting with engage. This is where you just start with big ideas that you see in the world around you. Important topics, maybe things that are happening in the news and your community or things that really matter to students. And from those big ideas, you choose one and then try to ask what those essential questions are that make it matter, that make it important, that make it meaningful. You work through this questioning phase which is challenging for kids but really important for them as well. And you narrow your questions down to one essential question. This connects that big idea to you and your work and why it matters. And then you turn it into a challenge statement. This is a statement that starts with a verb, it elicits action, and it's almost like, and I bet you can't do this type of challenge. Then we move into the investigate stage. And this is typically where I break students up into teams and they work together to identify all the things that they possibly need to know in order to solve that challenge. They come up with guiding questions and these guiding questions are the sky's the limit. They group them, they prioritize them, they organize those questions, they match them up with activities and resources that can lead them to an answer. An answer to those questions which will give them true evidence of what will be impactful as far as their solution. So they analyze the data, they analyze the answers, the things that they have learned and they synthesize that and then they're ready to act. So that concludes the investigate stage. In the act phase, students put their solution into action even if it's just at a small level but they don't just hand it into the teacher and say, here's my idea for a solution to this challenge. They actually need an implementation plan and from that plan and from that actually trying it out in real life then they evaluate the results and they decide what would help it be more effective and what they would do differently if they had the chance to do it over again. You'll see along the outside or the outer edge of the challenge based learning framework that some important skills are ongoing all the time. Documenting this process through capturing media and collecting evidence of learning, reflecting on learning, not just at the end but all the way throughout. Thinking about how we learned what we learned and how we know what we know. Sharing the results and sharing the successes and the failures, all of it. And so that's happening throughout the process. Couple of my favorite CBL examples from my work as a teacher. One being my work with my husband at elementary PE. You can find this video on Nebraska loves our public schools or iloveps.org where the fifth and sixth grade students were challenged to change a health habit in their families and a great proof that when students are vested and invested in the learning process they'll continue working on their solutions for years to come even after the grades been assigned. The second one is represented by the book cover on the right. You can find it in the Apple bookstore for free. It's the story of eighth grade English class and using CBL to change people's minds or change people's opinions about divisive topics. This came about because of the need to teach persuasive writing and rather than just teach it in a traditional way where essays were handed in for a grade and then handed back, students were challenged to actually do something meaningful in their communities with their writing. So they took on topics that mattered to them. Wide variety of highly opinionated topics and they did research on them and they asked real questions and they gathered evidence and then they used their writing skills to create letters or campaigns and speeches and presentations, editorials and news articles and the real world skills that they developed included the ability to investigate and research and interview and analyze data and produce media and messages along with many other great valuable learning opportunities. Challenges in CBL can take on many different forms as far as duration. They don't have to be a semester long or a year long event. There can be just a short term challenge less than a week or even a highly intense short maybe 24 hour challenge with a limited amount of resources students can truly try to rise to the occasion and see if they can get a little taste or experience of what that challenge might drive them to achieve. A mini challenge is usually deemed as a short term challenge so students can practice the process and maybe focus on some content but maybe it doesn't go completely as far in that framework so limited depth maybe a little bit more teacher directed and then that true open-ended longer-term challenge lets students kind of drive the entire journey and hopefully guided by students' interests and passions. Many resources available for implementing challenge-based learning I would specifically direct you to this toolkit on the Digital Promise website. If you scroll through that, you'll see ideas for big ideas and challenges and even some guiding questions to get your students started. It's definitely not meant to be a prescriptive list or a recipe or a lesson plan that's followed exactly but it does get you started with what's possible. You can take any idea on there anywhere from ecology to kindness and just use it as a starting point and see where your learning community together takes it. Also on that website, there's a link to the CBL user guide and that book shown with the book cover on the right is an invaluable resource for walking you through step-by-step through the whole process. I'm in much greater detail on what I'm able to do on this webinar. There's also resources available like this editable CBL Canvas. You can use with students to keep track of the work that they do or just map out a challenge as you're working on it together in Teams. And just recently released in the App Store as a free CBL Nudge app. This is a really kind of creative way to get those brain juices flowing whenever students or yourself seem to get stuck at a step in the process. You can just open up the app and it gives you all kinds of little nudges as to what you could try next to keep the ideas and the thinking flowing. To support a challenge-based learning environment in your school, it's important to have that common understanding of vocabulary, to use the terminology and have a consistent use of the terminology in order to be on the same page. It's also a great idea to try it first with adult learners. Use CBL, work through the framework at your next staff meeting or next school improvement session. Take a look at a challenge that you have as a professional learner yourself and work through Engage, Investigate and Act to get some experience in it. You don't need to tell the kids that they're doing it. It can be a stealth integration into your learning environment. It definitely can fit with the standards and I always like the students to make those connections so that they are aware of what standards they're working on and how they tie to the different guiding questions that the students ask or the guiding activities that they do. But you do have to have as a teacher with CBL a willingness to let go and let those students take some of that control. Definitely build in some time for ongoing conversations because it's gonna feel messy and it's not gonna feel like everything is going smoothly but that's the reality of knowing that deeper learning is happening. So give yourself permission to fail a little bit and look to others for ongoing support and coaching along the way. So kind of some concluding tips here. CBL could be thought of as a noun, as a thing. We're gonna do a CBL or we're going to take part in a CBL or a series of CBLs. That has a set time span and it might be just another kind of teaching resource that you pull out of your bag of tools and use it for a specific purpose but I would challenge us all to think of CBL as a verb. This is kind of a way that we think about learning in general. Kind of a central philosophy for our community of learners that we don't just rush to the quick easy solution but instead we're truly questioning and driving things deeper. We can use it at all levels of learning, planning, organizing and teaching. We can really make a demonstrative change in our institutions by infusing challenge-based learning and challenges into our daily learning. So I encourage you to get onto Twitter and search for the hashtag CBL world and follow that or just peruse and see what examples are being shared across the globe of schools and classrooms who are taking on real amazing challenges in their communities and kids are coming up with brilliant solutions going further than we would have ever expected them as teachers and definitely at farther than our curriculum guides may have originally predicted that they would go. Get some ideas, get some inspiration and then just open up the doors to you and your students and take a look at the big ideas that exist in the world around you and use that CBL framework and the resources available on challengebasedlearning.org to make an impact on the world around you.