This page has been created to provide links and additional resources for the online course in project based learning and teaching offered by Intel.
Course Link:
NOTE: Click on the title of the course on the page that opens, then, on the next page that opens, click on "Project-Based Approaches (launch the course)" in the list of Elements courses offered by Intel
Related Resources
Credit: Courtesy of PBL Associates http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-teaching-strategies
By Tristan de Frondeville
A teacher in this author’s workshop said, "When my students and I are in the flow, then I don't feel like I have to work as hard." I heartily agree. When 90 to 100 percent of my students are excitedly engaged in their tasks and asking deep and interesting questions, I experience joy, and joy is a lot less tiring than the frustration that comes with student apathy.
Project-based classrooms with an active-learning environment make such in-the-flow moments more common. Yet these same classrooms require many teacher and student skills to work well. As teachers, we can feel overwhelmed when we try something new and experience chaos instead of flow.
The good news is that the strategies for creating and managing high-quality project-learning environments are productive in any classroom, whether project learning is a central part of the curriculum or not. Here are ten ideas that you can start practicing in your classroom today to help you create more moments of flow.
1.Create an Emotionally Safe Classroom
Students who have been shamed or belittled by the teacher or another student will not effectively engage in challenging tasks. Consider having a rule such as "We do not put others downs, tell others to shut up, or laugh at people." Apply it to yourself as well as your students. This is the foundation of a supportive, collaborative learning environment. To learn and grow, one must take risks, but most people will not take risks in an emotionally unsafe environment.
2.Create an Intellectually Safe Classroom
Begin every activity with a task that 95 percent of the class can do without your help. Get your students used to the fact that when you say, "Please begin," they should pick up a pencil [tool – include technology] and start working successfully. This gets everyone on the bus. Then make sure your students know that these initial easy tasks will always be followed by increasingly challenging ones. Create rich and complex tasks so that various students have a chance to excel and take on the role of helping others.
3.Cultivate Your Engagement Meter
Be acutely aware of when your students are paying strong attention or are deeply engaged in their tasks. Master teachers create an active-learning environment in which students are on task in their thinking and speaking or are collaboratively working close to 100 percent of the time. Such teachers notice and measure not only when students are on task but also the quality of their engagement.
Although it may take years to develop the repertoire of skills and lessons that enable you to permanently create this active-learning environment, you can begin by discerning which activities truly engage your students. The more brutally honest you are with yourself, the faster you will get there.
4.Create Appropriate Intermediate Steps
The first question I ask educators when I coach them on project learning is how many of their students say, "We can't wait to do another project," versus "Oh, no! Not another project." Teachers tend to get the first response when they scaffold challenging tasks so that all students are successful.
For example, take the typical task of interviewing an adult outside the classroom. Some teachers assign the task on Monday and expect it to be done the following Monday, confident that by including the weekend, they are providing sufficient support. Other teachers realize that finding, cold calling, and interviewing an adult are challenging tasks for most young people, so they create intermediate steps -- such as brainstorming, searching online for phone numbers, crafting high-quality interview questions, and role-playing the interview -- that train all students for success.
5.Practice Journal or Blog Writing to Communicate with Students
Japanese teachers highly value the last five minutes of class as a time for summarizing, sharing, and reflecting. A nice way to change the pace of your class is to have students write regular reflections on the work they have done. Encourage and focus their writing with a prompt, such as "The Muddiest Point and the Clearest Point: What was most confusing about the work you did today, and what new thing was the most clear?" Use this approach to guide future lessons and activities. Consider writing responses to student journal entries in order to carry on a conversation with students about their work. [easily done online using a wiki or other web2.0 tool]
6.Create a Culture of Explanation Instead of a Culture of the Right Answer
You know you have created a rich learning event when all students are engaged in arguing about the best approach to the assignment. When you use questions and problems that allow for multiple strategies to reach a successful outcome, you give students the opportunity to make choices and then compare their approaches. This strategy challenges them to operate at a higher level of thinking than when they can share only the "correct" answer. Avidly collect problems and tasks that have multiple paths to a solution. As a math teacher, I create problems that have a lot of numbers instead of the usual two. For example, I can present this problem:
5 + 13 + 24 - 8 + 47 - 12 + 59 - 31 - 5 + 9 - 46 - 23 + 32 - 60
Then I can say, "There are at least three fundamentally different strategies for doing the following problem. Can you find them all?"
7.Teach Self-Awareness About Knowledge
All subjects build on prior knowledge and increase in complexity at each successive level of mastery. Effective learning requires that certain skills and processes be available for quick recall. Many students let too much of their knowledge float in a sea of confusion and develop a habit of guessing, sometimes without even knowing that they are guessing.
To help students break this habit, paste a graphic (unsure__maybe__sure__) next to each question on your assessments. After the students answer a question, have them place an X on the line to represent how sure they are that their answer is correct. This approach encourages them to check their answer and reflect on their confidence level. It is informative when they get it wrong but marked "for sure" or when they do the opposite and mark "confused" yet get the answer right.
8.Use Questioning Strategies That Make All Students Think and Answer
Pay a visit to many classrooms and you'll see a familiar scene: The teacher asks questions and, always, the same reliable hands raise up. This pattern lends itself to student inattention. Every day, include some questions you require every student to answer. Find a question you know everyone can answer simply, and have the class respond all at once. [Use technology – texting, clickers, web polling sites, etc]
You can ask students to put a finger up when they're ready to answer, and once they all do, ask them to whisper the answer at the count of three. They can answer yes, no, or maybe with a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or thumbs-sideways gesture. That also works for "I agree," "I disagree," or "I'm not sure."
Numerical answers under ten are easy to show with fingers, but don't limit yourself to math questions. For instance, if you're teaching time management, have students let you know what their progress is halfway through the class by putting up one or more fingers to show whether they are one-, two-, or three-quarters done with the assignment, or finished. Do these exercises at least two or three times per class.
9.Practice Using the Design Process to Increase the Quality of Work
Students in school get used to doing work at a consistent level of quality. Unfortunately, low-performing students get used to doing poor-quality work. To help them break the habit, use a draft-and-revision process.
Many professionals use such a design process to increase the quality of their work. Engineers build prototypes, respond to critical feedback, and refine their design before going into production. Artists make sketches of big works and revise their ideas before creating their final piece. Use the design process to drive your students to produce higher-quality work than they are used to doing when they create only a first effort. Include peer evaluation as part of the feedback they receive.
10. Market Your Projects
When your students ask, "Why do we need to know this?" you must be ready with the best answer possible. Great projects incorporate authentic tasks that will help students in their lives, jobs, or relationships. Engage students by developing an inventory of big ideas to help you make the connections between your assignments and important life skills, expertise, high-quality work, and craftsmanship. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills provides a good starter list.
Also, search out the powerful processes and ideas experts in your own subject use repeatedly. (In math, for instance, my list includes generalizing and parts and wholes.) Keep a journal of the big ideas you've discovered simply by teaching your subject. By continually referring to these big ideas, you will encourage students to think and act like subject-matter experts and develop skills they will use throughout their lives.
By Tristan de Frondeville, a former teacher who has also coached educators and written curriculum, heads PBL Associates, a consulting company dedicated to project learning and school redesign.
21st Century Teaching and Learning Resources
21st Century Learners vs 20th Century Teachers (Roxann's wiki page of resources)
"The Framework presents a holistic view of 21st century teaching and learning that combines a discrete focus on 21st century student outcomes(a blending of specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and literacies) with innovative support systems to help students master the multi-dimensional abilities required of them in the 21st century.
The key elements of 21st century learning are represented in the graphic and descriptions below. The graphic represents both 21st century skillsstudent outcomes (as represented by the arches of the rainbow) and 21st century skills support systems (as represented by the pools at the bottom)."
Project Based Learning Websites/Info
The Buck Institute for Education (BIE) is dedicated to improving 21st Century teaching and learning throughout the world by creating and disseminating products, practices and knowledge for effective Project Based Learning (PBL).
Intel's resource page of Project Based Units. Searchable by grade level and/or curriculum area. (Why reinvent the wheel?!)
http://educate.intel.com/en/ProjectDesign/UnitPlanIndex/SubjectIndex/SubjectIndex.htm
Internet4Classrooms.com
In February, 1997, Susan Brooks and Bill Byles began a collaborative effort to extend assistance to fellow teachers. In November of 2000 that project expanded to a web presence known as Internet 4 Classrooms ("i4c"), a free web portal designed to assist anyone who wants to find high-quality, free Internet resources to use in classroom instruction, developing project ideas, reinforcing specific subject matter areas both in the class and at home and even for online technology tutorials. The portal is used by teachers, parents and students of all ages on six of the seven continents (there are not many classrooms in Antarctica) and is available to anyone with an Internet connection. We do not charge a subscription fee.
Edutopia-The George Lucas Foundation
LOTS of great info, include Project Based Learning Resources
PBL Checklists for Teachers
Checklists to support Project Based Learning and evaluation
Project Noah
Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.
Delicious Community's bookmarks for Project Based Learning
Diigo Community's bookmarks for Project Based Learning
The Hat (software for PC only) :-(
The Hat is a simple but handy little utility that offers a fun and easy way to automatically determine a random order from a list of any amount of names. You can even use it to pick individual names for raffle and sweepstakes winners, etc. or pick pairs of names for deciding random partnerships, complete with cool animation and sound effects.
Project Based Learning in Hand (Tony Vincent's presentation for ISTE about handheld devices used for project based learning. Includes some recommended apps.)
New Tech High: A whole high school designed around Project Based Learning! Here's their excellent list of resources.
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Info about Skype, WI ePals, h.323 connections and more
- Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration --create a free account to post your own request for a collaboration
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Skype's education collaboration portal
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Global SchoolNet's mission is to support 21st century learning and improve academic performance through content driven collaboration. We engage educators and students in meaningful e-learning projects worldwide to develop science, math, literacy and communication skills, foster teamwork, civic responsibility and collaboration, encourage workforce preparedness and create multi-cultural understanding. We prepare youth for full participation as productive and compassionate citizens in an increasing global economy. Founded in 1984, GSN is a 501(c)3 non-profit education organization. Let's work together to give youth the skills they need.
Assessment Resources
Animoto, Voicthread, Facebook, and others.
Tony Vincent's guide for creating, including templates, rubrics and more.
Free lesson plans and educational resources as well as a social networking community. Create groups with your colleagues--find other groups to join--save and share resources easily
Teaching Internet/Information Fluency
http://21.cif.org
Self-paced, online assessment and tutorial modules for grades 6 through 12 and faculty development
Testmoz is a test generator that sports 4 question types, automatic grading, a really simple interface and detailed reports.
Jennifer Wagner, creator of ProjectsByJen, has been successfully encouraging teachers since 1999 to use online projects in their PreK-6 classrooms. Using various ideas, Jennifer will help you understand how online projects will help you make the most of your time in a variety of ways. Winning numerous awards for her creative ways in encouraging teachers to collaborate, her teaching style is very user friendly, creative, and personable.
When?
November 3, 2011 8:30am-4:00pm
November 4, 2011 8:30am-2:30pm
Where?
Glacier Canyon Lodge @ Wilderness Territory
Wisconsin Dells, WI
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