Blog Assignment #9

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

    In the video Project Based Learning for Teachers, by Tony Vincent, we are given a very helpful overview of what project based learning is. To incorporate PBL in the classroom, we must make a project with a purpose. This means not only must it grow knowledge, but it must mean something to the students. The students must address an audience to show what they learned or, better yet, teach other what they have learned. A driving question must be included, which is the question that their project is answering. Learning standards need to be identified as well so that you can be sure to stay with the subject matter.  Students need to be grouped together and brainstorm about whir project. Rubrics need to be used for evaluation. Deadlines must be met and students must focus on the process. And at the end projects need to be reviewed so that they may be refined if needed.
 Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning is a wonderful list to help a teacher put together a project for PBL. It states that "every good project needs a need to know, a driving question, students voice and choice, 21st century skills, inquiry and innovation, feedback and revision, and must be publicly presented." A need to know is chosen by the subject of the classroom and the level of the students.  A good driving question is one that portrays the main point of the project and focuses on solving a problem. Students get to pick how they are going to do their project along with learning 21st century skills like communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology.

 What Motivates Students is letting them have a choice in what they learn and how they learn. This helps get them involved and interested in learning.  Letting students share what they have learned about helps to give them a sense of importance. Being grouped together also will help motivate students because they get to share ideas and keep each other focused and on task.
    Ten Sights Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration has 10 sights that seem to be pretty helpful. A few of these sights we use in this class. Titan pad and Google docs works a lot alike. They both are sights for storing and sharing documents. All Wisher and Corkboardme are very similar to padlet, the program we use in this classroom to do collaborative work. Today's meet and Skype are places "where students and teachers can meet and see only what needs to be seen".
    Wing Project:Crafting a Driving Question is a video that is explaining how to create a good driving question while also showing a group of teachers in the process of creating a driving question. I enjoyed watching the teachers brainstom over what question would work best for their project. its nice to see teachers doing this for a project instead of just the students! This helps make the projects fun and enjoyable and also helps teachers and students apply the learning standards to their projects.