Blog Post #9

What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning?

In the Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning  by John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller we learn that it is important to make projects meaningful. There are the seven steps that are recommended to accomplish this.

1. A Need to Know-Educational Purpose-An entry event can get the students interested
2. Have a good driving question
3. Student Voice and Choice
4. 21st Century Skills for project presentation
5. Student Inquiry
6. Feedback and Revision-critique each other's work
7. Present Project to a real Audience

Project Based Learning For Teachers by Tony Vincent gives a good overview of standards and PBL meeting standards. Vincent emphasizes having a driving question, collaboration, and communication skills. He also points out that students develop critical thinking skills and career skills. Questioning, investigating, sharing, and reflecting are key steps to project-based learning. Technology also plays a huge part. Students will use power point, Glogster, class dojo, moviemaker, meeting words and more to work on and present their projects. "Students take charge of their learning". I think this is a great way for students to really absorb new information and learn to problem solve and think on their own.

In What Motivates Students? we hear from students talking about what their teachers do to motivate them and what personally motivates them to do well in school. A lot of the children want to make good grades so that they can get a good job when they grow up. I enjoyed hearing the different rewards that teachers give their student for doing well. Some teachers give candy and some give trinkets such as stickers and pencils. I like the reward system of earning pretend money and then buying things from a class store every Friday.

Michael Gorman writes about collaboration for PBL projects and tools on the web in Ten Sites Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration in Project Based Learning. 

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

This is a great resource of web tools that I will look back to when teaching in my future classroom. Most of the tools I had not heard of.

In Two Students Solve the problem of Watery Ketchup By Designing A New Cap  video we students who came up with their own driving question. The boys both love ketchup and both wanted to solve the problem of watery squirts of ketchup. Their first step was to brainstorm and sketch out some ideas. They came up with a solution and created it. The boys were proud of their work and talked about how they enjoyed the class. I think this type of project-based learning is a great way to get students to use critical thinking skills and be proud of their work.