Blog Post #9

Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning, I learned how to properly decide for a project in the classroom that will educate and motivate students.The steps given are to be followed by the students and be engaging. The most important step, in my opinion, is the "hook." To grasp your students attention, the teacher must present the project in a compelling way. Once the students are "hooked", it is about advising students on good research and great presentation skills. Students learn through relation with the project's subject that this so called "driving question" really resembles the real world.

In the video, Project Based Learning for Teachers, we are given several different examples of driving questions and resources the students have available to them. In the video, different types of skills students will learn while doing projects e.g. communication and collaboration are being described. Einstein's quote "Teachers should not teach but set the grounds for which their students learn." is a perfect way to describe Project Based Learning.

The article, Project Based Learning In Physical Education, gives a perfect example of how Project Based Learning is so diverse and is not just for one certain classroom. In the article, it describes how students got the opportunity to come up with a way for their peers to be involved in P.E. I feel it was a perfect way for students to become more knowledgeable about their fitness and just how important P.E. is. Project Based Learning in P.E. gave the students the opportunity to become more involved in warm up routines, exercises, and any of those physical things that one would only research about P.E.

High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of Project Based Learning Implementation was a great video for me, as a future teacher. It helped me realize that PBL is a NEW way of teaching and although in my head it is such a brilliant aspect of teaching, it is more than likely going to get difficult to know how to incorporate PBL in the right way in the classroom. The teachers in the video really express the hardship they have with PBL, but they know it is a great way to teach. They try to incorporate PBL in all subject learning.

Two Students Invent New Ketchup Bottle Lid video was very reassuring. It made me think, myself as a teacher, what my students could possibly come up with when the sky is the limit on their research and projects with Project Based Learning. It reminded me of the video of Pausch when he said that he never had certain expectations of what his students could accomplish. Keep your students learning off the radar! Do not give them a settling point on their projects, let them explore and research into something that is relative to their learning, yet interesting to them.