Ms. Bridget Higgins and her team receive two awards for their innovative education proposals.
Montrose School teacher Ms. Bridget Higgins was chosen to participate in a recent conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aimed at bringing together people interested in improving the education process in America. At the Education DesignShop conference, Ms. Higgins’ team won two awards for their innovative education proposals.
Each team at the MIT conference included a teacher, a student, a technology professional and a policy maker. Montrose senior Kelsey Gallagher ’14 was selected to participate in the conference as a student.
The interdisciplinary teams were given a problem to solve in the area of education. “The first step was to figure out the problem, and the next step was to come up with ideas for potential solutions,” said Ms. Higgins. “Then we created a prototype and pitched our idea to a panel of judges.”
Ms. Higgins’ team addressed the question of how to assist teachers with project-based learning. The team’s award-winning idea was to create a social media website to assist educators with project-based learning.
“Research has shown that project-based learning is an effective way for students to learn,” Ms. Higgins explained. “Our team’s project-based learning network would connect teachers with experts for the sake of professional development, it would allow students to connect with other classrooms where students are doing the same project, and it would connect classrooms with donors who would be able to purchase materials for project-based learning.”
Ms. Higgins’ team won a consulting session with LearnLaunch, a company that supports the growth of education technology, to help them determine how to develop the idea into a product. The team was also awarded $500 to cover initiating expenses.