What Project-Based Learning Is — and What It Isn’t

Screenshot/High Tech High The term “project-based learning” gets tossed around a lot in discussions about how to connect students to what they’re learning. Teachers might add projects meant to illustrate what students have learned, but may not realize what they’re doing is actually called “project-oriented learning.” And it’s quite different from project-based learning, according to eighth grade Humanities teacher Azul Terronez. Terronez, who teaches at High Tech Middle, a public charter school in San Diego, Calif says that when an educator teaches a unit of study, then assigns a project, that is not project-based learning because the discovery didn’t arise from the project itself. For Terronez, the goal is to always connect classroom learning to its applications in the outside world. It takes a lot of diligent planning by the teacher to design projects that give students space to explore themes and real-world resonance to make it meaningful for them. Katrina Schwartz

Explore Online Content with InstaGrok This is a guest post from Jennifer Carey (@TeacherJenCarey) of EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site. One of the most challenging things to tackle in education today is the glut of information that is available to students right in their pocket! With a few swipes, students can come up with thousands of resources; however, evaluating all of those sources serves as a challenge for students. Enter, instaGrok. InstaGrok is a search engine that brings together information in the form of an interactive mind-map, including text, videos, and more. It is available for free online, iOS App, and Android App. After entering a query, instaGrok creates an interactive mind-map on the topic including multiple sources. Project Based lLearning | Learn about project based learning on instaGrok, the research engine Students can also keep a journal in their Grok and test themselves with quizzes designed by the Grok engine. Looking to learn more about research or Project Based Learning?

A Project-Based Learning Spectrum: 25 Questions To Guide Your PBL Planning A Project-Based Learning Spectrum: 25 Questions To Guide Your PBL Planning by Terry Heick I’ve been talking with a friend recently about project-based learning, which is leading to a TeachThought Project-Based Learning framework hopefully sometime next week. (Or whenever I finally get this TeachThought podcast off the ground–maybe Tuesday? In the meantime–and in pursuit–I’ve been thinking of the kinds of questions I consider when planning a project–or planning a unit when students plan a project on their own. I’ve more or less organized them into a kind of spectrum, from the simplest questions to consider, to the most complex. What role is the learner assuming? Looking to grow Project-Based Learning at your school? A Project-Based Learning Spectrum: 25 Questions To Guide Your PBL Planning; image attribution wikimedia commons (the spectrum to the right)

Project Based Learning I’ve been teaching using a project-based learning pedagogy since mid-2010 when I was introduced to PBL by my friend, Dean Groom. Since then I have had some wonderful learning experiences with PBL and I enjoy sharing both my successes and failures and experiments in learning on my blog. I thought it’d be helpful for other people if I put all of my PBL-related posts on one page, just in case you’re starting out and you want to see how another teacher is doing it too. If you have any questions, just post a comment below or send me a tweet on twitter My VERY first experience with PBL – and it was hard work and had serious issues! My post might help some of your PBL newbies feel less anxious, maybe! This is a reflection on my very first PBL experience with Year 10 – it looks at why it may not have been 100% successful.

Problem-based learning Problem-based learning (PBL) is an exciting alternative to traditional classroom learning. With PBL, your teacher presents you with a problem, not lectures or assignments or exercises. Since you are not handed "content", your learning becomes active in the sense that you discover and work with content that you determine to be necessary to solve the problem. In PBL, your teacher acts as facilitator and mentor, rather than a source of "solutions." Problem based learning will provide you with opportunities to examine and try out what you know discover what you need to learn develop your people skills for achieving higher performance in teams improve your communications skills state and defend positions with evidence and sound argument become more flexible in processing information and meeting obligations practice skills that you will need after your education A Summary of Problem-Based Learning: This is a simplified model--more detailed models are referenced below. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Must-know Buck Institute Project-Based Learning Resources Taking the leap and implementing Project-based Learning can be daunting, but there’s no need to panic or go it alone. Buck Institute of Education is the epicenter of PBL with an amazing number of resources and a community of practitioners who are leaders when it comes to sharing ideas and projects related to PBL and spreading the word about the benefits. Here are four ways to improve your instruction that are appropriate for beginners or a great refresher for the more experienced: Make sure students are asking the right questions At the heart of Project-based Learning is the inquiry process. It is the burning question that ignites the critical thinking component of PBL, which is why formulating the question is a crucial task. Use exemplars and models as a guide Early in my career, I felt that if I were to show students examples or modeled a task for them, that I was somehow cheating them from the experience, and I also assumed that students would just copy what I showed them.

What is PBL? To help teachers do PBL well, we created a comprehensive, research-based model for PBL — a "gold standard" to help teachers, schools, and organizations to measure, calibrate, and improve their practice. In Gold Standard PBL, projects are focused on student learning goals and include Essential Project Design Elements: Preparing Teachers for a Project-Based World Authored by Emily Liebtag and Tom Vander Ark Download Preparing Teachers for a Project-Based World Download the PBL Quick Start Guide for Teachers In the paper, Preparing Teachers for a Project-Based World, we explore how teacher preparation and professional learning can be aligned to–and modeled after–the types of deeper learning environments we also seek to create for students. We share a vision for preparation and beginning teacher professional development–a vision that embraces the opportunity of personalized project-based learning (PBL) for all students. Drawing upon the expertise and leadership of PBL educators across the country, we share what an ideal preparation program and early career professional learning for teachers ought to look like if we want to develop high-quality PBL teachers. Questions addressed in this paper: Why do we need to prepare teachers for PBL? Download Preparing Teachers for a Project-Based World This publication is part of “It’s a Project-Based World” series.

Is PBL Right for All Students? - New Tech Network New Tech Network While there is no such thing as a dumb question, there are questions that reveal our misunderstandings. Asking “Is PBL right for students?” reveals two persistent misconceptions it is important to address. Misunderstanding 1: PBL is a way of teaching Implicit in the question about whether PBL is right for all students is the idea that students teach themselves and that some students need more direct teaching than that. What makes learning project based is that students are brought into contact with new concepts and skills through a problem, context, or scenario that makes those new ideas worth knowing. Two key aspects of PBL aid in the persistence of this misunderstanding. Another other aspect of PBL that adds to this misconception is that in good PBL, the learner must regularly consider what they need to know and how they might go about learning that. Not incidentally, this change in experience should make school a more fun and engaging place to be.