Blogs on Project-Based Learning

More and more, we're hearing the term "Digital Citizenship." I think we should simply call it "Citizenship."

In our increasingly connected world, what it means to be a citizen is contextualized by more than just our countries and communities; we are global citizens. Part of being a citizen these days is manifested in what we do digitally, and because of that, I will adhere to the term "Digital Citizenship" -- for now. I hear parents, teachers and community members talking about their concerns over their children's online behavior, and rightfully so. I believe it is our job as educators to teach and assess Digital Citizenship, and I also believe PBL is a great way to target this objective in an engaging and authentic way.

Green Street Academy is a two-year-old public middle and high school in urban Baltimore, Maryland. One of the school's focuses is to embrace the green eco-sustainability movement and the new career paths it will generate. Like most schools, GSA is designed around extremely high academic standards that capture students' imaginations, stimulate their curiosities and inspire their successes. Unique to our program, though, is that last year we began the process of transforming the entire school to a true project-based learning (PBL) environment by the end of this school year. Here, are some of the transformation experiences -- both positive and negative -- we've had since beginning the shift.

On a visit to the Architecture, Construction, and Engineering Leadership High School in the old town area of Albuquerque, New Mexico, you might be struck at first by what this unique public charter school lacks. There are no classes in the traditional sense. No bell schedule. No cafeteria. No hallways -- just a big, open space in an industrial building that once housed a call center. On the perimeter are eight classrooms that are assigned to projects, not teachers.

When teachers embark on project-based learning with their students, there's no predicting exactly where projects will go. Good projects are open-ended by design, leading to sometimes unexpected results. For 500 of the world's most accomplished PBL teachers, the project path recently took them all the way to Prague in the Czech Republic for a global celebration of what's working in education.