Blogs on Project-Based Learning

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Adam ProvostMarch 20, 2013

Keynote speeches at educational conferences these days often identify that change is underfoot in education and that we must embrace different learning models. Most don't say how to set these changes in motion. So I got my hopes up when Carla Rinaldi was announced as the keynote speaker at the Winter Institute in Reggio Emilia, Italy this past February.

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Sammamish High School is a comprehensive high school that is on the cutting edge of public education. Like many schools, we serve a diverse student body, with 45% of our students receiving free and reduced lunch support. We also serve a high percentage of special education students relative to other district schools, and currently house the district-wide program for beginning and intermediate English language learners. We have had good success with college matriculation rates, but as a community, we saw an opportunity to better serve our students and foster in them the skills and habits of mind that will make them competitive in the new economy. Along the way, we are challenging ourselves to re-imagine how school can better serve students through collaboration, authentic problem solving, and opening windows between the disciplines of school and the broader community.

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Here at Edutopia, we talk a lot about project-based learning, or PBL. Whether you call it deeper learning, inquiry-, problem-, or challenge-based learning, all are variations on the same idea -- that young people can learn more deeply, and retain the information better, when they can work collaboratively in teams to explore and solve real-world problems. Many would say that PBL can be a more effective way to teach - but anyone who has tried it agrees that doing it well is not easy.

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Andrew MillerMarch 7, 2013

A recent blog by Grant Wiggins affirmed what I have long believed about creativity: it is a 21st-century skill we can teach and assess. Creativity fosters deeper learning, builds confidence and creates a student ready for college and career.

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Andrew MillerFebruary 21, 2013

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.

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Eric Isselhardt, Ph.D.February 11, 2013

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.

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Rob RiordanJanuary 17, 2013

What should students learn in the 21st century? At first glance, this question divides into two: what should students know, and what should they be able to do? But there's more at issue than knowledge and skills. For the innovation economy, dispositions come into play: readiness to collaborate, attention to multiple perspectives, initiative, persistence, and curiosity. While the content of any learning experience is important, the particular content is irrelevant. What really matters is how students react to it, shape it, or apply it. The purpose of learning in this century is not simply to recite inert knowledge, but, rather, to transform it.1 It is time to change the subject.

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Suzie BossJanuary 11, 2013

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.

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Andrew MillerJanuary 7, 2013

Worksheets matter! I know we hear a lot of talking points that tell us to get rid of them, but I think it's much more complicated than that. That call for "no more worksheets" comes from a place where that is all there is. By that I mean classrooms where students do nothing but worksheets. Often these worksheets are de-contextualized from relevant work, and this is where there's an opportunity to reframe and refine the traditional worksheet. There is a time and place for drill and practice or individual practice -- even in a PBL project. The key is to make it appropriate and relevant.

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Minli VirdoneDecember 18, 2012

Khan Academy is primarily known as an online portal of videos and exercises (we have delivered over 207 million lessons to date). We believe that online learning goes hand in hand with hands-on, project-based learning -- and that’s why we decided to run a summer camp, the Discovery Lab, to try out the deeper explorations that can be done in a physical space. As we fine-tune the lessons that work in this setting, we will try to integrate them more deeply into the core Khan Academy platform, so students and teachers around the world have the infrastructure and tools to fully explore their creativity.

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