Blog Post #9

What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning?

In order to answer this question, I had to read a few articles and watch a few videos. The first article I read was 7 Essentials for Project Based Learning. This article talked about what every good project needs. It needs to have two key ingredients. First, it needs to be a project that students will enjoy and really put their all into. Second, the project should be educational, so students can learn as well. The Buck Institute for Education provided a list of 7 elements to help create a group project. The 7 elements includes A Need To Know, A Driving Question, Student Voice and Choice, 21st Century Skills, Inquiry and Innovation, Feedback and Revision, and A Publicly Presented Product.

In the video, Project Based Learning for Teachers, Tony Vincent also talks about Project Based Learning. He has a list of elements that are consisted with PBL. Those elements are that the project has a purpose, addresses an audience, crafts a driving question, identifies learning standards, creates a rubric, groups students, has brainstorming questions, and meets deadlines. He gave a few ideas so that teachers could take advantage of what technology offers. Tony suggests that teachers get away from the "busy work" and get ready for PBL. He recommends PBL because it involves being open minded and creates problem solving which makes students think deeper and work harder. Tony says "think of PBL as questioning, investigating, sharing, and reflecting".

In the article, Project Based Learning and Physical Education, Andrew Miller talks about how valuable Physical Education (P.E.) can be when using Project Based Learning. Physical Education doesn't seem like it would work with PBL, but Andrew presents an idea to a group of students to show just how it can work. He told the students to create the best exercise program. The students could create any exercise program they thought was best as long as it met the standards of Physical Education.

In the video, High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation, teachers from Sammamish High School in Bellevue are helping re-define curriculum within the school. They are re-designing 30 courses. English and Math are subjects that are more challenging to for Project Based Learning. This is because many people tend not to think about PBL with these particular subjects. The teachers think PBL is helping to keep students more engaged in the classrooms. Most of the teachers are buying into PBL because they like that they can create their own courses. They get to figure out how things looks within their own subject area. The teachers talk about how Literature is hard to create a PBL course for because of all the philosophical elements. Math is hard to create for as well, but the teachers just look to where it fits. All units of Math could not be covered using PBL. In order to make Math and PBL work, teachers allowed students to create games. This is a good idea because it allows the students to have a little fun while also learning.

In the video, PBL: What motivates students today, students talk about what motivates them to do better in school. Most students have the same answer which is they all want to get good grades so that they can have a better life. And by better life, they mean being successful in life in whatever occupation they choose. Rewards were also talked about. Rewards are big to students especially if they know what that reward is. When asked what reward(s) they would get once they finished a project, most of the students knew exactly what they could get. Most of the student's answers were either food, points, or being able to do a certain activity in class or outside the class.

So I go back to the question that I began with. What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning? Teachers can teach us that as long as you have a good and interesting project that students will be engaged. Students can teach us that just how motivated and interested they were in the project with their end result.