The Common Core is the “what.” PBL is the “how.” Can you hear me now?
I guess you have a Need to Know. Forty-five states have signed on to the Common Core. Louisiana is first out of the gate and will begin implementing the Common Core in the 2012-2013 school year, with the expectation of full implementation in the 2014-2015 school year. Two years from now the Bayou State will have plenty of company. PARCC is scheduled to make its performance task items available this summer following a pilot in the spring that targeted large urban districts (New York, Washington DC, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia and St. Smarter Balanced, which awarded a contract in April to a design and development group led by CTB/McGraw Hill, plans on a January 2013 pilot of its test items/tasks.
How about this little nugget from an example performance task: “Students engage strategically in collaborative and independent inquiry to investigate/research topics, pose questions, and gather and present information.” Sounds like PBL to me. A Step-by-Step Guide to the Best Projects. Manor New Technology High School in Manor, Texas, is a 100 percent project-based learning school.
They are part of the New Tech Network of schools and their approach has yielded remarkable results, including a 98 percent graduation rate, with all of their graduates accepted to college. The success of their PBL approach is largely attributable to the fact that their process is designed to stimulate student inquiry. Additionally, their process can be applied to any project in any subject, which means there is a consistent approach across grades and subjects at Manor. We followed a sophomore world studies class through a three-week project called Controlling Factors, created by teaching partners Mary Mobley (English) and Michael Chambers (world history). They designed a project that capitalized on the wild popularity among their students of the best-selling novel The Hunger Games.
Project-Based Learning: Success Start to Finish. PBL: Project, Passion, Play Based Learning. Effective and progressive educators understand and attempt to implement PBL strategies and practices within their learning settings.
What is PBL? Project-based learning. Project Based learning. In the eye of the new world. Personalized Learning 1. Project-Based Learning at High-Tech High. Designing Schools for 21st Century Learning. Seeing the Classroom as a Hub of Technology-enabled Social Change. Antero Garcia, who teaches English at a high school in South Central Los Angeles, is a PhD candidate, focusing on critical literacies and civic identity through the use of mobile media and game play.
He utilizes his classroom as a center of youth participatory action research. His students assess and address real-life needs in their South Central community. Garcia is on the conference committee for the 2012 Digital Media & Learning Conference in San Francisco, Calif: “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World.”
Garcia is heading up one of four important sub-themes in the conference, “innovations for public education.” A strong advocate for youth and teachers in public education settings, he is also one of the featured bloggers at DMLcentral, where he consistently pushes the digital media and learning community to be innovative, yes, but also relevant and meaningful. We have an identity problem as an educational community. Recommended Resources: Mobile Learning, Digital Activism, Multitasking. Professor of urban planning, Amy Hillier, recently spoke at TEDxPhilly to talk about how data visualization technology can map a city’s emotions and memories. Geographic Information System (G.I.S.) technology has become more commonplace and allows statistics to be easily mapped, but in this article, "Mobile Technology: Mapping a City's Emotions, Memories," Hillier argues that we can go one step further.
By using data visualization to map the city that isn’t visible to the eye (i.e. sewage system, water pipes, and other underlying infrastructure), it can be used as an experiential tool. She gives an example of two children living in different neighborhoods whose experiences can be quantified by mapping where they eat, where they go for entertainment, and average household income. The hope is that using the technologies in this way can change our environment for the better. Occupy LEGO Universe (online movement) Ownership of Learning. Ownership of Learning. PLE & PLN. Constructive & Project-based Learning. Project-Based Learning. Project Based Learning. Projects. As of July 1, 2013 ThinkQuest has been discontinued.
We would like to thank everyone for being a part of the ThinkQuest global community: Students - For your limitless creativity and innovation, which inspires us all. Teachers - For your passion in guiding students on their quest. Partners - For your unwavering support and evangelism. Parents - For supporting the use of technology not only as an instrument of learning, but as a means of creating knowledge. We encourage everyone to continue to “Think, Create and Collaborate,” unleashing the power of technology to teach, share, and inspire. Best wishes, The Oracle Education Foundation. Project Based Learning: Explained.