resource: project zero

Here is a link to Harvard University's Project Zero.

Project Zero is an educational research group at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.

friendly reminder

Project-based learning activities should be:

Student led rather than teacher led!

&

Classrooms should foster collaboration instead of competition!

activity idea: environmental education

Because of my recent involvement with environmental education in the Hocking Hills I have found a list of good questions to ask students. When children say “what’s that?” Do they really want a name? to help them focus on what is discovered, instead of telling an answer, ask another question:

Is it alive? How do you know?

What does it look like? What is it doing?

How does it move?

What direction is it going?

Do you see any eyes, nose, mouth, feet, etc?

If it has one and you can’t see it, why not?

What is another thing like it?

How does it protect itself?

Is it alone or are there others near by it?

If you took it home and kept, what might happen?

Where does it rest?

Where is its home?

when do you see it?

how might it die?

do you think it will look the same when it dies?

how do you think it was born?

do you think it was a different shape when it was a baby?


Students have the ability to find answers. Analyzing and coming up with hypotheses about what they discover will help them arrive at real answers which will make a greater impact on them. Even as adults, when we do not know what something is, we dissect it, analyze it, and come up with conclusions about its significance. Children should be able to have that same kind of freedom. 

activity idea: importance of insects

An activity idea for project-based learning would be for students to research the importance of insects. As a teacher you could set up field trips for students to see insects in their various habitats. Possible areas of concentration would be to build projects around how insects affect society, the economy, and our environment.
I would encourage them to answer these questions:

• How do insects affect agriculture
• How does agriculture and the use of pesticides & fertilizers affect the insect population
• How do other cultures use insects
• Do insects effect our economy? If so, how and in what ways?
• The unknown presence of insects in our food

Video to get them started: Why not eat insects?

seven essentials of pbl

7 Essentials of Project-based Learning:


1. Need to Know: Students need to be presented with an issue that is relevant to them. It needs to be something that they “need to know.” Many times students are unmotivated when it comes to learning because they don’t feel like they need to actually know the material. Or they have an unclear representation of why it’s important to their life.

2. Driving question: Each project should have a question that clearly defines the purpose of the project in clear terms. It can be abstract, concrete or focused on solving a problem.

3. Student Voice & Choice: After giving some direction students should also have the opportunity to choose their own end product that fits their style. They should be given the responsibility to structure their time efficiently.

4. 21st Century Skills: Children should be given the opportunity to use 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking and proper use of technology.

5. Inquiry and Innovation: Research is more meaningful when students start with their own question and then continually build upon their research. This generates more & more questions which the students can then find the answers to thru more research/discovery. *students should keep a list of questions that they continue to add to so they can see the progression of their work.

6. Feedback & Revision: Students are given the ability to critique the work of their peers. This demonstrates that most first attempts are not extremely successful. It shows the importance of continually revising ones work. The teacher should also be involved in this process and give additional feedback/guidance.

7. A publicly Presented Product: Projects are more meaningful and extensive if it is going to be presented to the public. When there is a real audience involved the students will care more about the content of their project.


Source: 7 Essentials for PBL

just for fun

Video: 

people who support pbl

During my studies at Ohio State I have come across many authors who support the ideas behind project-based learning. I believe every educator should aspire to emulate their practices: 
(click on each name for more information)

• bell hooks
• "The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom." 
• Book: Teaching to Transgress
• Paulo Freire
• "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
• "Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects."
• "For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other."
• John Dewey
• "Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself."
• "We only think when we are confronted with a problem."
•  Sir Ken Robinson
• Video: Changing Education Paradigms
• Video: Bring on the Learning Revolution
• Video: Schools Kill Creativity