Blog Post #9: What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Bases Learning?

Seven Essentials For PBL and Project Based Learning For Teachers : Reading/watching these blogs opened my eyes to the fact that when students are presented with a print out of information with guidelines and a subject for a project; this may come off as busy work. This could lead students to disconnect from the project and make them bored.The "print out" method also restricts the students and their creativity. It does not allow for the students to dive into the content and make their own decisions about what they would like to learn more about and focus on as a group. PBL focuses on seven main components: 1) Need to know: This is used to engage students and get them interested in the material in which the project will be based on. Your need to know can be an "entry event"such as a video, blog post, or podcast that gives the students information about the subject of the project. 2) Driving question: According to www.ascd.org; a good driving question captures the heart of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge. 3) Student voice and choice: When using PBL, it is important that project means something to students. The best way to make this happen is to allow students to speak their minds and make most of the decisions during the project. 4) 21st century skills: With PBL, students learn many skills that they will be able to bring with them to college and the workforce. Some of these skills include collaboration, critical thinking and technological skills. 5) Inquiry and innovation: This step allows for students to follow a trail of ideas and questions that are created while working on their project. they can use resources such as the internet, books, interview and more to gather this information. They will then filter the information gathered and use what is necessary for the project. This allows for the project to be more meaningful to the students. 6) Feedback and revision: This is a very important part of PBL. This step allows for students to go over their work with classmates, teachers, mentors and even specialists about their topic. By doing so, students can make the necessary changes and adjustments to their projects before presenting them to their audience, 7) Publicly presented product: The final step in PBL is presenting the finished product. By publicly presenting projects, students put in more time and effort into their work because they know it will be presented to a crowd and not just the teacher. This step seems to be one of the most important aspects of PBL because it makes the students strive to make a more presentable product. By reading this blog, I learned that if the essential steps for PBL are followed, it is possible for students to learn more effectively than if they were assigned a project with a strict topic and guidelines.

What Motivates Students: The students in this film taught me what drives them to do well in school. It seems that they understood that in order to succeed in life, it is important to take their education seriously. I really enjoyed the "classroom money" that one student's teacher used. I think that by offering students an incentive to do well in class could never hurt. From what I gathered, this teacher offered "money" to her students based on their productivity and allowed them to buy things with the money they collected at the end of the week. Others stated how they enjoy when the teacher calls them out for a job well done while others enjoyed getting treats such as candy and lollipops. It is videos like these that are important for educators. The kids in this video taught me some new ways to keep them intrigued in the classroom.

Project Based Learning and Physical Education: I learned from this blog that PBL can even be used in physical education. In Miller's blog, he teaches us how to use PBL and it's seven fundamentals to create a work out plan. I think this is a great way to incorporate new skills in an area that has never really been viewed as an "academically advanced" class. Yes, I so believe physical education classes are very important and I do believe that you learn from taking this class but lets face it; there is no physical education section on the ACT. Using PBL in physical education is a great idea that I would never in a million years thought of myself. Now that I have read this blog, I can think of multiple ways PBL could be used in physical education.

Ten Sights Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration in PBL: I learned a lot of cool sites that could be used for PBL in the classroom. One of my favorites that was pointed out it is linoit. I think this would be a great tool for not only students but for teachers as well. It can allow you to create an online class board that you can put all of your assignments on and share with students. Also, students can use this site to share information they have found while completing research for projects. This allows for students to teach other students and teachers as well. I also learned about a great site called titan pad. Its similar to google docs but easier and more simple. This would be a good tool for younger students in elementary and middle school. It allows you to create notebooks and documents and also gives you the option to share these notes or notebooks with others. I also found out that Skype also offers a Skype in education site. I have not looked into this one yet but I feel this could be a great learning tool for group projects.

Overall I learned some great PBL tips from our educators and Kids by watching/reading the blogs for this post. It makes me even more eager to utilize these fun, new technologies and strategies in my classroom.