Friday, October 17, 2014

Blog Assignment #9

Scrabble pieces spelling our project based learning

What can teachers and students teach us about Project Based Learning?

7 Essentials for Project Based Learning

This was a great article by John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller. It's basically a checklist of what needs to be incorporated in a PBL project. It lays out step-by-step what the project should include, but more importantly why it should be included. Step 1 "The need to Know" talks about an "entry event" to grab the students' attention. I think this is the most important part of any learning, project based or not. We must grab hold of the students' intrigue and interest or else they will be doodling and counting the minutes until the bell rings. Step 4 "21st Century Skills" was interesting, as well.

Project Based Learning for Teachers

This was a quick 3 minute video by Tony Vincent. It's essentially a "down and dirty" of what PBL is and why we should implement it. It was incredibly well done. The music and visual stimulation held my attention the whole time and I absorbed the information that he was trying to get across. If I am ever asked, from here on out, about what PBL is, I will refer the asking party to this video. I really liked the section towards the end of the video where is was showing how the common core is the WHAT and PBL is the HOW. An absolutely excellent effort from Mr. Vincent.

What Motivates Students?

This was a fantastic video by Suzanne Ball. She interviews 4 students, 3 of whom seem to be in middle school and 1 in high school, about what motivates them to do well and what is a good reward. The high school student picked food as a reward. I actually laughed loud enough my dog came in to investigate what was going on. As much as we can learn from the experiences of other teachers in their PBL endeavors, there will never be as pure a source of information as from the students themselves. I believe they can teach us more about the motivations behind our projects than other educators ever could. I would turn to a colleague for help crafting a project, but would always turn to a student for the motivation behind the project.


I went to YouTube to find the last 2 videos I watched. I typed "what do students want" in the search bar and found these 2 videos here and here. These two videos were made as responses by students when prompted by the questions "What do you want?" and "What do you expect from your teachers?" I was moved by these videos. I mean that in the most sincere way I can. A few of the responses were of an academic nature, but the overwhelming majority were about personal growth and learning life skills. They want to be understood. They want to be given a chance. They want to be individualized. It was really educational, no pun intended, to see these videos from the students. I think we can really use this information when developing our projects. PBL should have a personal touch that will grow the student as a whole, not just in their knowledge of our particular subject matter.

2 comments:

  1. Good job at finding your own resources. Great post!

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  2. Hey Kyle,
    Nice to see you again. Great job on this post man. Great job finding your own resources as Jordan said. I agree when you said that the students give us the purest idea of what gets them motivated. We need to rely on what they tell us more that experts.

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