WPP Findings and Implications

After working on my Wicked Problem, the issue of teaching grammar in the foreign language classroom, I feel that I've learned a lot about how to address similar problems in the future in a systemic and functional manner.  Below are the answers to the final questions about my Wicked Problem as well as my final conclusion about how the project went.

• Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

Unfortunately because of the fact that I am not currently teaching I didn't have an active French class to implement my solution with so I was forced to use my parents because they were the closest available candidates.  Because of this set back I didn't get the results I was hoping for.  With this presentation in particular my audience would need to have previously taken a French course in order to be successful and although I gave my parents a small lesson on French they have never studied it so the information didn't stick very well.

• Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice

Again, because of my lack of students I really didn't see much success with my WPP implementation but hopeful that in future when I do have a class that I will see some success.

• How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?

I would definitely follow the same setup we used here in class starting with detailing your wicked problem then brainstorming solutions then trying those solutions then reflecting.  Its a great thought process to go through and gives you ample chances to adjust your solution as you see fit.  However, in the future when I do another project like this I would definitely add more layers to it, meaning not just create a presentation with Jing like I did here but create more assignments that will give the students more practice with the topic and of course, incorporate more technology both inside and outside the classroom.

• What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?

The main thing I learned is that although incorporating technology can be scary sometimes and things may go wrong, in the end its worth the risk to try something new in your classroom and give your students alternative ways to learn.  I think the order in which we did this project was very beneficial especially because we received feedback each step of the way to help us improve our solutions.  I would suggest that anyone wanting to do a project like this use their fellow teachers and ask them for their opinion because you'll end up getting great feedback that can make your project even better.

• In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do

Well, first off I would probably add more layers to my solution.  For the purpose of this class i just made a presentation using Jing and PowerPoint to inductively teach the past tense in French.  However, if I were using this in class I would add more activities incorporating technology in order to really build on what the students learned in the presentation.  Another big problem with my project was my lack of students so I wasn't able to get accurate results on my solution but going forward I would probably like to implement this type of learning in one or two classes and teach the others in class in order to compare student learning from one class to the next to give me an idea of what is most successful. 

• What are some conclusions and recommendations you can make to others after going through the process of addressing a "wicked problem"?

Unfortunately I didn't come to any really firm conclusions about the effectiveness of my wicked problem solution due to my lack of students however I really enjoyed the general idea behind this project.  There are always those big problems you face in the classroom whether it deals with your content, classroom management or even general classroom activities and this project gave us a great set of tools to create a solution for our individual problems.  I would definitely recommend other teachers to try out a project like this and collaborate with other teachers to solve these wicked problems we come across in the classroom because chances are, if you are having a problem someone else is too.