Blog Assignment #9

What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning

According to Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning a good project has to fulfill two criteria. Number one, students must see the project as meaningful. Number two, a meaningful project fulfills an educational purpose. The seven essentials to creating a good project are
1. Need to Know - it needs to be relevant
2. A Driving Question - gives a sense of purpost
3.Students Voice and Choice - the more, the better
4. 21st Century Skills - collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and use of technology
5. Inquiry and Innovation - guide students in real inquire
6. Feedback and Revision - Formalize the process
7. Publicly Present Product - students care about the quality more.

Project Based Learning for Teachers says, "project based learning has students working over an extended period of time answering a driving question. The question is deep and requires students to complete an end product to share their learning with others." When the Common Core State Standards are the "what," project based learning is the "how." Project Based Learning makes students use skills that they will not only need fore school, but also as adults.

Project Based Learning is not only for the core subjects, but it can also be used in Physical Education. In Project Based Learning in PE, Pflug states that he has high school students create create physical fitness programs for the middle school. In doing this, he is also meeting the State Standards because the students have to have knowledge of the physical education to create the programs.

English and math are the hardest subject to incorporate Project Based Learning; however, it can be done. In PBL - High School Math, the teachers have monthly staff meetings and a five day intensive summer institute to work on incorporating Project Based Learning. The teachers redesigned their courses and departmentally worked together to "inject" Project Based Learning into Math and English. It is important to remember that Project Based Learning will not look the same in every subject, if it did, it would not work. For example, when teaching probability in math, the students can create games using dice. However, creating games may not work for other subjects.

Two Students Solve the Problem of Watery Ketchup by Designing a New Cap is a video of two high school seniors, Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson, who were in a project based learning class and were given the prompt to come up with something relevant to them. The students started off with saying, "It really bugs me when..." The decided on when you squirt ketchup and water comes out and gets every where. So they designed a new lid to be placed on the ketchup bottle that prevents this from happening. I could not figure out what subject this class was for, science, math, etc. and I am not sure how it related to a school subject, unless it was Engineering or something separate from the core subjects. However, I think it is interesting how two high school students researched and designed this ketchup lid. I think Heinz needs to pick it up because I agree with Thompson, "Wet bread is gross!"