Sunday, March 22, 2015

Blog Post #9

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

In an article by John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller, the 7 base components of PBL are described to create the perfect PBL plan.
     1: A need to know. In order for the student to become interest, the teacher must spark interest and create the "need to know." 
    2. A driving question. The driving question feeds off of the "need to know." This is the question that creates curiosity in the student's mind. 
    3.Student voice and choice. Giving the students a choice in the project helps keep interest. 
    4. 21st century skills. "A project should give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life."
    5.Inquiry and Innovation
    6.Feedback and Revision. Given students the opportunity for revision relieves some of the pressure and giving feedback provides motivation. 
    7.Publicly Present the project. Presenting a project to a group encourages the student to assure better quality. 

In the video Project-Based Learning for Teachers many important aspects were covered. The main points that mean the most to me included: collaboration, communication, and critical thinking; allow students to take charge of their own learning; always have a purpose; brainstorm; meet deadlines; and refine the ending product. Each of these aspects are incredibly important for teachers to do in order to host a successful PBL lesson. 

In the video "What motivates Students" students describe what they find important in PBL. I found this to be very important and informative. Students stated that they liked positive feedback from teachers, classroom incentives, and free-time incentives.  They also stated that their goals consisted of "wanting to do well in life, having a good career, and being able to take care of their families. This was very helpful because it gives the teacher knowledge of how to motivate the students.

High School Teachers meet the Challenges of Project Based Learning
This video shows the crossover from conventional style teaching to project based learning. This helps a lot in high school due to the inclusion of real-world problems and connections. This helps to keep motivation and make PBL exciting for not only students, but teachers as well. 

In this article, the reader meets two students who are currently in a PBL course. What I found the most interesting, however, is that the teacher simply gives the students the prompt "It bugs me the most when..." and allows the students to run with their response. This gives ample leeway for the students to be innovative in creating their projects and provides a real world connection. Allowing the students to choose their own topic based upon their interests keeps motivation in the forefront of their minds. 


1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed reading your post. PBL is all about actively engaging students so that they are more interested and inclined to learn. In my opinion, PBL really is better and more effective than the lecture and test taking method.

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