Ideas And Inspiration For The K-12 Community - K-12 Instructional Resource Center K-12 Internet Resource Center Welcome entrsekt reader. Thank you for visiting K12IRC.org. We hope you find the K-12 Internet Resource Center to be a valuable resource that you will come back to often. Ideas And Inspiration For The K-12 Community K12IRC.org is an entirely free & independent resource, cataloging over 2,300 web and video resources for the K-12 community. No registration is needed – just dive in. Resources Find a lesson idea, video or activity for your classroom. Development Check out the wide variety of professional development opportunities and resources. Tools Everything from classroom automation and making a class web site to creating videos and 3D printing. Support Find an affinity group or a good laugh. Partners Develop partnerships and engage your students, their parents, and the community. YouTube Copyright School Where Russell learns some valuable lessons about copyright. A video from: Copyrights and Intellectual Property Rights more videos... Today's Featured Web Site... Take Five
36 Core Teacher Apps For Inquiry Learning With iPads 36 Core Teacher Apps For Inquiry Learning With iPads The interest in inquiry-based learning seems to ebb and flow based on–well, it’s not clear why it ever ebbs. In short, it is a student-centered, Constructivist approach to learning that requires critical thinking, and benefits from technology, collaboration, resourcefulness, and other modern learning skills that never seem to fall out of favor themselves. Regardless, St Oliver Plunkett Primary School has put together two very useful images that can help you populate your iPad–or classroom of iPads–with apps that support both inquiry-based learning (the second image below), and a more general approach to pedagogy based on Apple’s uber-popular tablet (the top image). The original pdf for the first file can be downloaded here. 36 Core Teacher Apps For Inquiry Learning With iPads; image attribution St.
High Tech High - Project Based Learning Seven Successful PBL Projects In March 2005 High Tech High received a $250,000 grant from the California Department of Education to disseminate project-based learning methods to teachers in non-charter public schools. As part of the project, High Tech High teachers have documented successful projects to share with collaborating teachers from local districts and across the HTH network. The current volume presents the fruits of these labors. The aim is simple: to offer practitioners useful, easily adaptable models of real projects. Read more... This New House How does human habitation affect the environment? learn more » Millionaire How can an idea be transformed into a product that could make us millions? learn more » San Diego Field Guide How can we be better environmental stewards of the San Diego Bay? learn more » Urban Art How do math and science influence artistic expression? learn more » Vietnam Project learn more » Drug Project learn more » Machines learn more »
Project-Based Learning Through a Maker's Lens The rise of the Maker has been one of the most exciting educational trends of the past few years. A Maker is an individual who communicates, collaborates, tinkers, fixes, breaks, rebuilds, and constructs projects for the world around him or her. A Maker, re-cast into a classroom, has a name that we all love: a learner. Making holds a number of opportunities and challenges for a teacher. What Do You Want to Do? The first step in designing a PBL unit for a Maker educator is connecting specific content standards to the project. Choosing, thinking, reflecting, and sorting possible projects should be a career-long process. Essential Questions With an appropriate project chosen, an educator can begin framing the learner's journey. Making requires partners. Finally, an educator can start thinking about individual lessons. Failure Is a Preferable Option Good projects require failure. Teachers new to PBL and Making often make similar mistakes:
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: Using Project-Based Learning To Flip Bloom’s Taxonomy For Deeper Learning - Using Project-Based Learning To Flip Bloom’s Taxonomy For Deeper Learning by Drew Perkins, Director of TeachThought PD One of the central features of high quality project-based learning is the pedagogical relationship between the Driving Question and the “Need to Knows” that stem from it. In the video below I use the Explain Everything app to show how teachers and schools, using a process of rich inquiry, can leverage great thinking and learning by flipping how you approach the concepts behind Bloom’s Taxonomy. Instead of starting at the bottom and focusing on the teaching and learning of content prior to moving up, consider flipping that approach by starting at the top and asking students to create an authentic product with a strong Driving Question. Interested in growing deeper learning with PBL at your school?
Evaluating the impact of learning through 'real' projects Research from the United States has shown that 'Learning Through ‘REAL’ Projects' has significant impact on pupil development and engagement. Over the next three years, we are working with the Educational Endowment Fund to test the effectiveness of this method in up to 12 UK secondary schools. REAL Projects allow teachers to formulate lessons and activities around a single complex enquiry, and require students to produce high quality outputs with real-world application. When designed and taught well, REAL Projects stimulate broader enquiry, encouraging students to work collaboratively, think creatively to solve problems and manage their time. A REAL Project is not just any project used to organise learning. • is generated from teacher and/or student interests and passions • is designed around an essential question that has validity in the ‘real world’ • is tuned and tested by other teachers for validity and rigour before it is taught
Exploring Resources for PBL - Project Based Learning Boot Camp Explore Resources for Reinventing Project-Based Learning Resource selection and annotation by Jane Krauss and Suzie Boss NOTE: These resource links were reviewed for relevance, quality, and interest at the time of this page’s publication. Many of these links go to independent Web properties with no direct connection to ISTE. Tools and ResourcesRelated ReadingsBlogsPodcastsCollaborative Spaces Web Links for Tools and Resources for Project Planning, Assessment, Collaboration, and More Harnessing the Power of the Web: A Tutorial for Collaborative Project-Based Learning by Global Sch Global SchoolNet promotes international collaboration and offers a tutorial for designing rich projects to share with others. PBLNet by WestEd The PBLNet Design and Invention Center supports teachers, parents, and children interested in project-based learning, design, and invention. Back to top Related Readings Blogs Podcasts Collaborative Spaces
3 Lessons From Teaching Our First PBL Unit | Blog After attending the Buck Institute for Education’s PBL 101, we embarked on our first Project Based Learning (PBL) unit. At the workshop we learned that if you are just “doing a project,” don’t call it PBL. So one of our goals was to make it gold standard instead of just implementing a cool project. Our PBL unit focused on exploring the driving question, “How did the floods in South Carolina in October of 2015 affect the human and physical geography?” That said, we learned that we can improve our practice for future PBL units. Lesson 1: Partner with Another Teacher Without a doubt, the most significant takeaway of our first PBL unit was seeing the students blossom while engaged in Project Based Learning. The first and most obvious reason to co-teach and co-plan is that it allows you to share the workload. Next, and perhaps even more important, having another teacher experiencing the PBL unit allows for greater reflection on daily lessons and activities.
Project-Based Learning Research: Evidence-Based Components of Success What boosts PBL from a fun and engaging exercise to a rigorous and powerful real-world learning experience? Researchers have identified four key components that are critical to teaching successfully with PBL (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008; Ertmer & Simons, 2005; Mergendoller & Thomas, 2005; Hung, 2008). All of these play a role in the curriculum-design process. Schools That Work: Every student at Maine's King Middle School is issued a laptop to support the school-wide project-based learning (left). Carefully Calibrated Project Design In general, PBL projects begin by presenting a driving question, one that focuses on intended learning objectives, aligns with students' skills, and appeals to students' interests. If you are new to PBL, it's best to start with smaller projects that are already part of the curriculum (Ertmer & Simons, 2005). Define the Content. Structured Student Collaboration Two ingredients are critical for successful collaborative learning (Slavin, 1991):
What the Heck Is Project-Based Learning? You know the hardest thing about teaching with project-based learning? Explaining it to someone. It seems to me that whenever I asked someone the definition of PBL, the description was always so complicated that my eyes would begin to glaze over immediately. PBL: The Elevator Speech An elevator speech is a brief, one- or two-sentence response you could give someone in the amount of time it takes to go from the first floor to the second floor in an apartment building. So the elevator opens up, a guy walks in and out of the blue asks you, "What the heck is project-based learning anyway?" You respond accordingly: "PBL is the act of learning through identifying a real-world problem and developing its solution. "That's it?" "Well, no," you reply. After all, if we just look at that definition, it doesn't state certain trends in PBL. A More Elaborate Response PBL is the ongoing act of learning about different subjects simultaneously. PBL Creates a Learning Story (Brief note here: Don't panic.