Blog Post #9

Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning

In this article, Ms. McIntyre surprised her students with a project. Throughout the article, it gives ideas for teachers to include Project Based Learning. The most important things to remember about Project Based Learning is: a clearer understanding of the topic; a driving question to focus their efforts on the project; allowing your students to have a voice and a choice when designing and creating their project; allow the students to build their 21st Century skills, such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and their use of technology; feedback and revision, teach them how to us rubrics to critique other's work; and a publicly present analysis. These are great factors we need to keep in mind when we are working with Project Based Learning activities.

Project Based Learning for Teachers

This is a video that explains why Project Based Learning is useful. The four C's, collaboration skills, communication skills, critical thinking skills, and career and life skills are great ways to teach our students how important PBL's really are. Project Based Learning is inquiry based, open-ended, problem solving, and personalized. It is also important to question, investigate, share and reflect. These are all very important skills for students to use because not only will they be using it now, they will be using it the rest of their lives.

What Motivates Students Today

Most students feel motivated when teachers give them positive encouragement on their work. It makes them feel like they have accomplished something, and it makes them want to continue do better in school. Students who get compliments for good work and good effort, tend to work harder because they might not be getting that attention and motivation they need at home. This video really opened my eyes that all kids, every single one of them, need to be given compliments. It brought to my attention that maybe the students who do not perform their best within the classroom may feel discouraged or frightened by their work. For example, if you compliment the same students repeatedly and leave out students in the classroom, the students who are not performing real well may feel as if their work is always wrong and the teacher hates them. It is important that we as teachers realize our students do have future goals, and it is our job to encourage them to reach them.

21st Century Educational Technology and Learning

In this article, it list ten collaboration tools that are great for Project Based Learning. All of these sites are really helpful, and I strongly encourage you to view this website and take notes because one day it will become very handy as PBL becomes popular within the classroom. The site that stood out the most to me was Google Docs because Dr. Strange has us using it a lot in EDM 310, which I am now thankful for because I know how to use it to create rubrics which are useful for Project Based Learning. Also, I played around with Todays Meet for a little while and found it really helpful for Project Based Learning activities. I discovered numerous ways engage learning in the classroom, and it does not take time away from your class for your students to create an account. It is quick, simple, and a good source.

New Ketchup Cap

Tyler Richard and Jonathan Thompson are two seniors from North Liberty High School who really like ketchup. They got really tired of water coming out, which caused to mess up their food, so they decided to tackle the problem. After plenty of research, they invented a new ketchup cap that captures the water and releases ketchup without you having a soggy hotdog or hamburger bun.