Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Blog Post #9

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


Seven Essentials For Project Based Learning, Gives the reader the two most important things that every project needs. The first being that teachers provide students with a meaningful task (One that drives the student to do his or her best) .The second is making sure that the task has an educational purpose. Then the site goes on to give the seven essential elements of PBL. 1. A Need To Know- This ultimately means that the teacher should activate the students minds into wanting to know more about the project. The teacher should initiate some questioning through a video, article, newsletter, or even a field trip. Any way that the teacher can grab the attention of the students, he or she should do for an introduction. 2. A Driving Question- After the introduction, the students should be left with an open-ended driving question for he or she to ponder over while doing the project. The source looks at the driving question as a thesis statement, which I like a lot. It gave me a better understanding of how important the driving question is. 3. Student Voice and Choice- This basically means that the students should have a certain free range of tools and sources to work with when doing their project. 4. 21st Century Skills- The skills here are reffering to collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology. With these things, the students have endless opportunities of the way their projects can turn out. 5. Inquiry and Innovation- This means a great deal of steps and lessons are turned into one lesson. It is sort of a way for generating new questions for answering in the classroom through their projects. 6. Feedback and Revision- This could be done by using rubrics or criteria for peer review. This step is meaningful for the students to understand what is expected of them during the project. 7. A Publicly Presented Product- This step is meaningful because it drives the students to do their best. When the students present their final project to people other than their peers and teacher, they want it to look better and more creative. This source has helped me a lot in recognizing keep steps for PBL.

Project Based Learning For Teachers Says Common Core Standards are the WHAT to the projects. The HOW to the projects, are the projects ideas and understand. We can learn from this video that technology plays a big role in the classroom and in PBL. Technology can leave the students with many possibilities for the projects. Many different websites can contribute for communication in PBL. Also, the different websites shown can give the students access to create things with countless possibilities. Another key for PBL that this source shows is that we, as teachers, shouldn’t spoon-feed our students. We should give them the tools and guidance to learn and answer things for themselves. I like this approach a lot. If you have a question look for the answer as hard as you can before giving up. Every project should have a purpose, a rubric, groups, deadlines, a process, and a product.

Project Based Learning in PE I find this source very interesting. Usually in PE class students just do physical activity. Through this project the students actually learn important information about the body that could be useful to them as we all the other students. What a great idea! The lesson also meets the NASPE. This truly goes to show you that PBL can be done in any subject. The students question, analyze, and create in PE class. This is a very fun and interesting PBL activity. This meets all of the criteria from the first source. I really like this source and what it has to show students and teachers. It proves that PBL can be used for anything.

What motivates students today is a video that consists of many different videos from different kids. The students actually give their own word about what motivates them. All of the students say things along the lines of what they want to do when they grow up. The students also give the viewer of the rewards they get for doing well in school. This ranges from money to spend on stores or pizza at school. One student is rewarded by having extra time outside to themselves or candy. If students are rewarded for their good efforts in class they are more apt to do well on project and achieve their goals in class. I have seen this approach first hand and it works.

The Ketchup Bottle Case is a really interesting and cool story to read. These students came up with a problem or question that they wanted to solve. Through vigorous and hard work, they achieved their goals and are now two very well known students that invented something useful through PBL. The students have proved to teachers and students everywhere that PBL is very important and can take you in many directions.


PBL

2 comments:

  1. Hey Alex. I also found it awesome that PBL can be used in every subject. I think it is pretty great that multiple subjects can be covered, like writing and history, that could take a load off students and teachers. I did find one error "This source has helped me a lot in recognizing keep steps for PBL." keep should say key I believe. But your response is great to me. Good job and go gators!

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  2. "It proves that PBL can be used for anything." YES!

    Great job!

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