Blog Post 9

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

We begin to answer this question by looking at our first assignment. The article Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning gives us a breakdown of seven crucial elements that are needed in order to have a successful project-based learning experience.

1). A Need to Know
2). A Driving Question
3). Student Voice and Choice
4). 21st Century Skills
5). Inquiry and Innovation
6). Feedback and Revision
7). A Publicly Presented Product

In our second assignment we were to watch a video called Project Based Learning for Teachers, which discussed the benefits of being a teacher who implements project-based learning into their curriculum. As we have seen before, students who are engaged in project-based learning have higher levels of interest rather than being submitted to busy work. With project-based learning the students actually become the teachers. Ultimately this leads to better overall understanding, and challenges them to think critically. This also ties into the video What Motivates Students? As educators it's going to be our responsibility to keep our students motivated year round. So why not give them a chance to address the classroom how they would want to do it. They don't want to have classes where all you do is read from the book and then expect them to "burp-back" what we just taught them.

If you were willing to try some of these project-based learning techniques a good place to start would be Ten Sites Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration in Project Based Learning. With the use of technology on the constant rise, teachers should also be implementing this advantage within the classroom. When I become a teacher I will definitely be using some of the resources in my classroom.