Blog Post #9

What can Teachers and Students teach us about Project Based Learning?


The video Seven Essential for Project Based Learning discusses seven different things that should be done when doing a project. These seven essentials include:

1. Need to know: teacher introduces the project with something interesting, such as a video, a field trip, a guest speaker, or a lively discussion, instead of just giving the students a stack of papers that will make them not want to do the project.
2. Driving Question:students create a driving question that focuses on a specific area of the project topic.
3. Student Voice and Choice: students choose how to design, create, and present their products.
4. 21st Century Skills: students build and practice skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology.
5. Inquiry and Innovation: students created their own questions which leads to the search for answers which then leads to new questions, and testing ideas, and coming up with conclusions.
6. Feedback and Revision: students critique each other's work using rubrics that they created.
7. Publicly Presented Product: students present their projects to a public audience.

The video Project Based Learning for Teachers describes what Project Bases Learning really is and what it includes. This video helped me better understand what to expect or what I should do when doing project based learning. As a future educator I should know what PBL is and how it will help students.

The video What motivates students? includes different students who describe what motivates them to do good in school and what rewards that make them want to do better. One student said that he just like for teachers to simply complement him on his good work. A couple other students said that wanting to have a good job and better future is what motivates them to do good in school. Rewarding students on their good work makes the students want to do better in school.

The video and article Two students solve the problem of Watery Ketchup by designing a new cap is very interesting. I, along with many other people, do not like watery ketchup on anything. With the use of PBL, these to high school students were able to create something that will solve the watery ketchup solution.

In the article Ten sites supporting digital classroom collaboration in Project Based Learning, it introduces collaboration tools on the web that can be used in a Project Based Learning classroom. These sites include communication and collaboration with student to student, student to teacher, and student to expert. The ten sites include:

• Titan Pad
• Wall Wisher
• Corkboardme
• Google Docs
• Microsoft Live
• Today's Meet
• Will You Type With Me
• Linoit
• Skype in Education
• Quick Screen Share