Project-Based Learning and the Gulf Oil Spill

Eric,
Great posts and resources!

Using a larger model like a swimming pool gives you a lot of options. You can create a beach on part of the pool using rocks, pebbles, and sand. Get some aquatic plants from the pet store and set up a mini ecosystem. Use vegetable oil if you think motor oil is too toxic. New motor oil is not too bad, used motor oil is lethal. Go with vegetable oil, the clean up is much easier. You can create "storms" of varying intensities by using a garden hose and a spray nozzle. I imagine you might even create something like a tar ball but you might need salt water for that. Add salt if you want to see how the salt water and oil interact, of course if you use salt you would need salt water plants and be careful of the concentration of salt. You can be creative with this and give your students a real feel for this type of problem. Try collecting the oil before and after a simulated storm. Add more oil everyday to simulate the continued leaking of oil, etc.

Eric,
Thanks for this post. I learned so much about my own PBL unit that I plan to do in the fall with my ELA students. This is full of great information and ideas that are now spinning in my own brain as I figure out how to translate this into my little unit to save a campus tree.

How is the PBL camp going? For those of us not in attendance, are their archives that we can refer to throughout the year?

Thanks for the info and the great post!

-Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Take a cheap plastic swimming pool, fill it with water, add a quart of motor oil, observe what happens. You can try opening the quart of oil at the bottom of the pool and watch how that works. See if all the oil rises to the top or some stays suspended at the different depths of the pool. Try different collection systems, styrofoam, human hair, etc. See what is the most effective. Ask the students to try and design an oil collection device. What would it look like? How would it contain the spill? See if the device can be made from simple materials, etc. Give a awards to the kids that design a device that can absorb the most oil. For the older students talk about dispersants, surface active agents, etc. Demonstrate how they work on your small oil spill. There are endless possibilities with this model.

Seminole County Schools in Florida offered a pilot Quest Atlantis Summer Camp program for 4th and 5th graders during the week of June 14th, 2010. The program, based in the Challenge Based Learning model, utilized Web 2.0 tools as well as the virtual world of Quest Atlantis, to learn about and find immersive solutions to the problems being faced by animals from the oil damaged areas of the Gulf.
I was quite impressed about how much meaningful learning took place during just the four morning sessions of the camp. Next summer we are planning on expanding this PBL Within a Virtual World initiative to last about two weeks, connecting the immersive qualities of virtual worlds with real life situations.

A video showing the process can be seen here:

http://youtu.be/wjJAqjiweGA

Cheryl,
Thanks so much for sharing your project site. It's a terrific example of student-driven inquiry project.
PBL Campers are discovering more classroom resources as they get started with project planning. We're tagging in Delicious: pbl_camp
Thanks again,
Suzie