Upside Down Academy is a work in progress. It was created by The Puzzle School.
At it's heart Upside Down Academy is about making it easier for students to help each other learn through a creative, open-ended process.
The site is designed to make it easy to turn any lesson in to project-based learning. Anything that a student is taught can become a project as a student tries to figure out how to teach the same material to a peer in their own creative way.
When students create lessons a number of beneficial processes are encouraged:
- Students do creative work that allows for autonomy (they can approach the video how ever they want).
- Students have the opportunity to redesign, reshoot, edit, and iterate toward a video they are proud of.
- Students create something that has lasting value beyond just a grade and can actually be used by other students to learn.
- While trying to teach the lesson students will be exposed to the Protégé Effect where more learning takes place while trying to teach.
In addition to these potential benefits, students are creating lessons that they can refer back to later on, both as refreshers of their own learning as well as a portfolio of projects they have completed.