Blog Post #9

Teachers and students can teach us many things about project based learning. The teachers become students and students become teachers. Everyone is learning. In the links below we really learn the essentials of project based learning from both students and teachers from all over the country. They all have so many great ideas, I can not wait to use them in my future classroom.

7 Essentials for Project Based Learning

What every good project needs:
1: A need to know. Launch a entry event. For example start with a video of beautiful beaches and end with photos of closed beaches due to water contamination. It will spark students to discuss and interest students to why they do such things and if they have had any experience. Then the teacher will introduce the project.
2. A driving question. ex. "How can we reduce the number of days Foster's Beach is closed because of poor water quality?"
"A good driving question captures the heart of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge. The question should be provocative, open-ended, complex, and linked to the core of what you want students to learn."
3.Student voice and choice. The project needs to be meaningful to the students. It will keep them more engaged in their topic if they have an interest in what they are doing.
4. 21st century skills. "A project should give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life."
5.Inquiry and Innovation. "Students find project work more meaningful if they conduct real inquiry, which does not mean finding information in books or websites and pasting it onto a poster. In real inquiry, students follow a trail that begins with their own questions, leads to a search for resources and the discovery of answers, and often ultimately leads to generating new questions, testing ideas, and drawing their own conclusions. With real inquiry comes innovation—a new answer to a driving question, a new product, or an individually generated solution to a problem. The teacher does not ask students to simply reproduce teacher- or textbook-provided information in a pretty format."
6.Feedback and Revision. One of the most important thing the students need to learn is that most times your first attempt does not result in high quality work. It takes trial and error to make things perfect. This is real world application.
7.Publicly Present the project. It is good to have the students present their work to an audience. They seem to care more about quality when they know they have to present it to others. They are more likely to really research their topic so they know exactly what they are talking about.



Project Based Learning for Teachers

In this video you learn many things. These are a few key points that stood out to me:
-Collaboration, communication and critical thinking
-Students take charge of their own learning
-Albert Einstein said, "I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."
-Always have a purpose
-Addressing an audience
-Crafting a driving question
-Identifying the learning standards
-Creating a rubric
-Brainstorming branching questions
-Meeting deadlines
-Focussing on the product
-Refining the end product



What Motivates You to do Good in School?

This video was a recording of many different students explaining what motivates them. Their answers were all good. Some were serious and others were funny. Everything they said can be looked at from a teachers point of few in a great way. Every teacher needs to hear what motivates their students. It will help everyone in the end. Here are a few examples:
-Receiving positive feedback from teachers.
-Wanting to do well in life. Have a good job to take care of a family.
-Thinking of their future careers.
-Incentive to do good to be able to do the extra things they like to do in their free time
-Classroom incentives, a chart that keeps up with their behavior throughout the day and rewarded at the end of the week.

High School Teachers meet the Challenges of Project Based Learning

These high school teachers become the learners of project based learning. It is a mental shift from regular style teaching, and takes brainstorming and collaboration. They have to figure out how they can apply their ideas to real world applications. Math and english are said to be the hardest subjects to use PBL. By giving the teachers the choice to make their own course in pbl helps them better understand the process, and how to use pbl in their classrooms. They learn how to use these tools where they fit most in subjects, and it will never be the same in every classroom. Project based learning is not only exciting for students, but also exciting for teachers as well.



Two boys and their Project for Project Based Learning

In this video two senior boys are explaining their project for project based learning. They chose to evaluate why water comes out of a ketchup bottle when you squeeze. Why did they choose this project? They LOVE ketchup. Giving students the power of choice is key to them learning through pbl. They said they spent about a week brainstorming ideas, and created a model of a solution for under the cap on the computer. After they created this model they used a wax printer to print their fix to the old age problem, water with ketchup is nasty. They were engaged in what they were learning, and seemed very proud of their end product. This is just another way that pbl sparks interest in all of its projects.