Albany Senior High School/Impact Projects/Proposal

Advice before you start
To help you generate ideas for possible impact projects, your tutor will work with you on a the ideas generation process designed to help you explore your prior learning, knowledge and interests and start forming this into a proposal. It is important that you ask your tutor as many questions as you need to about this process in the first few tutor groups of the year so that you can get the most out of it. You will be using the material you produce in this sessions later in the year at the beginning of the second impact project semester.

You will be able to choose to work by yourself or in a team for your project. Your tutor and mentor can also help to link you with other people who have shared interests. You might also identify some potential stakeholders and work out ways to gather and understand their points of view e.g. survey, focus groups, video conferencing. You may also decide to do some reading around your idea, and look up recent articles on the internet or in the library so you can start to become more of an expert. During this time you will be offered support and guidance from your tutor as well as your mentor.

Eventually you will form your ideas into a proposal based on the four principles of impact projects. When presenting your proposal you will explain what learning you think will be available in the project, how it might involve other people, how will you make the product high quality and what interest is there in it personally for you.

Developing your proposal
A proposal is a process of developing your ideas into and initial project plan with a mentor. Both your mentor and tutor have experience with what projects need to work and will help you understand how certain things make project successful.

Once you have finished your ideas generation with your tutor you will begin to clarify the focus of your project, and start to develop the four principals for your proposal. Through consultation with potential mentors you will use the proposal sheet to formulate your ideas. You will also agree on what your success criteria might look like, (how you will know whether your product is high quality). You will begin to work out possible solutions, and propose the strategy that you consider is the best option, ensuring your project is manageable and successful. There is a proposal template that will help guide you through this stage, to make sure you have thought about all the things you need to.

4 principles proposal sheet sign off:
 * Proposal sign off and questions.

You will be given a time to present your proposal to a panel of teachers and peers. They will ask questions to help you show how you've linked your project idea to each of the four main principles. If your proposal gives enough evidence in the areas of the four principals it will be approved.

Tools for Proposals

 * E-portfolio group. Tutorial available [[Media:2014_eportfolio_P1_group_setup.pdf|here.]]
 * E-portfolio page in e-portfolios. Tutorial available [[Media:2014_eportfolio_P2_proposal_page_and_secret_URL_setup.pdf|here.]]
 * Setting up secret URLs (also part of the above tutorial). Tutorial available [[Media:SecretURLs.pdf|here.]]
 * Planning software for setting timelines.