K12 Project Based Learning – Top Best Resources

"These cover all the content areas and are FREE to use."

Project Based Learning (PBL) provides opportunities for students to collaborate on specific tasks to resolve one or more challenges. The effort is driven by asking questions that feed the investigative processes where students do some level of research to collect data and then draw conclusions by summarizing what they found.

Read the article and reduce your learning curve on PBL ... share it with your colleagues and get all the students at your school on the best track.

This ain't just 'bout your class, it's how you prepare your students for better careers as life long learners.

http://www.educationreporting.com/article-5pblEssential.htm

Happy Hump Day, Jack

Covers any Standard in your curriculum

Here is an excellent method for extending learning in any topic: communication. Whether we like it or not, technology does give us greater access to more types of communication. Teachers, now you can put communication to work in your lesson plan, fulfilling those Standards and giving your students the opportunity to talk around the world.

The 2008 series of iNet student online conferences, titled “Whose World is it Anyway?” is available for primary and secondary students around the world to debate issues. The discussions are focused on the work the students have contributed; however, students do not have to submit anything to participate in the message board. Students from many countries participate, though all conversations take place in English.

Themes ranging from technology to climate change are run throughout the semester, allowing students to express their opinions on one topic a month. Students are also encouraged to submit creative works such as poems, videos, and websites around a monthly theme. Teachers can register their class, or students can register themselves. Registrants will receive confirmation and reminder e-mails before the message board opens.

Pedagogy: project based learning (PBL) in action

Today many teachers, like myself, find ourselves teaching to the test - Criteria Reference Test: CRT- because administrators think the combination of a pacing calendar and standardize lesson will produce improved test scores. On the other hand, project based learning (PBL) focuses on growing the student interest with learning opportunities that involve action, materials and core concepts. I think the best of both worlds is a standardized lesson that supports teachers using PBL.

PBL works great for me. An elementary teacher in FL challenges students to use certain groupings of coins to buy items from the classroom store as a playful and engaging way for them to meet state first-grade curriculum standards for learning coin values and equivalences. PBL engages students using the proven method of constructivism and enables students to apply concepts in real time about what they're studying.

Got 9 minutes? Check out this PBL video clip in primary and secondary education. You can see student interviews and hear from the experts ...... well worth your time.

MIT distinguished professor Seymour Papert is among a growing group of scholars who support project-based learning, in which students move from hands-on work to abstract thinking by solving real-world problems. See the video clip.