Blog Post #9

      So, just what can teachers and students teach us about project based learning? Well, for a person who hardly knows anything about PBL I can learn a lot. The general idea of the program is known but the technicalities and the actual steps are pretty blurry to me. By watching these videos and reading these articles the idea is becoming a lot less hazy.
      In the article Seven Essentials for PBL, I learned that there is a proper way for establishing a project in the classroom that will be both educational and motivational for the students. By following these steps the students will be engaged from the beginning and as the teacher I will be there to guide them through their academic progress. The most important step in this, I believe, is the "hook." In order to grab their attention, the teacher must present it in a powerful way that will lure them into caring about the project. Then from there it's all about helping the students find good resources and ways to present what they have learned from the project. In doing this the students learn how this "driving question" really connects to the real world around them.
      In the video Project Based Learning for Teachers, first of all, this video really grabbed my attention. What this video does in contrast to the previous article, is it gives many different examples of driving questions and resources that students can use in their projects. It goes over the different types of skills students will learn while doing projects e.g. communication and collaboration. I think the Einstein quote at the end really sums up PBL. His quotes says that teachers should not teach but to set the grounds for which their students learn. This is the epitome of  project based learning and everyone can take something from that quote.
      The article Project Based Learning and Physical Education shows just how universal PBL is as a learning unit. This project shows that PBL can be used in any kind of classroom setting and that it is just, if not more, effective. Having projects in P.E. classes is a genius idea! It gets kids moving and thinking at the same time. What better way to get kids to exercise than to hand the reins to them and allow them to academically explore at the same time. It makes exercising more fun and innovative than  your typical physical education class. I thought that allowing high school students to come up with the a new middle school activity for P.E. was very creative. I could only imagine how much fun the students had with this project. This project example deemed very successful and if I was a P.E. teacher I would definitely steal this idea for my own class!
   The title for the video   High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation really speaks for itself. In this video, I saw the struggle that these teachers had to go through in order to find just how they could fit PBL into their curriculum and how it shaped their classrooms. Yes, this is a totally new way of teaching and I'm glad I watched a video from the teacher perspective about the hardships of it. I mean, we can't just come up with a new way of teaching and expect it to automatically fit into the ways that have always been taught. It's very interesting to see how they attempted to fit the new program into every subject and to learn that not every subjects works the same way with PBL. The effects will indeed be different between let's say math and English. Overall, I think that project based learning can indeed be applied to every subject. We as teachers just have to work together in order to find a way that best achieves this goal.
      Watching the video Two Students Invent New Ketchup Bottle Lid was very encouraging! It made me imagine just what my students will be able to come up with when I give them the means to go above and beyond. This really reminded me of Randy Pausch and how he said that he never set a limit on what his students could do. Once you set a limit, your students will always stop there. But if you give them the freedom to think and explore in new ways you never know what they will create.