Project-Based Learning
It’s not about ignoring the testing, the core curriculum or the standards. It’s about allowing students to pick an entry point and helping them discover what you want them to learn.
Join Jane Krauss and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach for a free, live webinar about project-based learning.
Spend an hour chatting with Jane Krauss, co-author of the best-selling Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age and Powerful Learning Practice co-founder and CEO Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. During our hour-long chat, we’ll talk about the basics of problem, passion, and project-based learning. You’ll see examples of effective projects, learn to identify what success “looks like” for planning and evaluating student learning, and we’ll talk about implementing PBL into your classroom.
The webinar will be held on Friday, August 3rd at 10am Eastern (NYC) time.
Registration is closed for this webinar, but click here to sign up and we’ll let you know when we schedule the next one!
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FREE WEBINAR: All about project-based learning: strategies, success, and implementation from @plpnetwork http://shar.es/tLiRV #CE12 #PBLchat
Join me for a free webinar: Project, problem, passion-based learning in the classroom from @plpnetwork! http://shar.es/tLiRV #CE12 #PBLchat
Get a sneak peek inside a PBL classroom, learn what student-driven learning looks like @plpnetwork http://shar.es/tLiRV #CE12 #PBLchat
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I am doing a session at the World Future Society this coming Saturday related to this topic. See http://horizon.unc.edu/projects/presentations/
I look forward to participating in your session.
Thanks for sharing. Looks exciting!
Will this be archived at all for those unable to attend? Sounds like it will be a great webinar!!!
Yes Tia, It will be sent to those who register. So go ahead and register and the next day you will get the archive.
Looking forward!
Our private preparatory school located in Brooklandville, Maryland, is “going global” with a new International Primary Curriculum (IPC), as well as initiating a Discovery Center through which our students will engage in problem-based, project-based learning; models supported by the Buck Institute. I was asked to be the facilitator of the Center. Our lower school principal connected with you all this past week, and has encouraged me to participate in the Webinar; very exciting. As I will be away on vacation and may have difficulty connecting that day (though I will give it my best effort, for sure); I also look forward to the archive. Thank you for this opportunity!
I may not be able to join you for the webinar,but I would like to see the archived conversation. Thanks so much.
Best,
Joanie Martin
I will be interested in reviewing the archived version. Sounds interesting!
I wish I could be there “live” but I’m glad there’ll be an archive. I’m looking forward to reviewing that! Good luck, Sheryl and Jane!
I thought this might be a good place to answer some of the questions coming in about PBL that were generated from the excitement at the webinar.
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Dear Sheryl,
Today’s webinar was great! I pick up more each time I engage in learning about PBL. If you have a moment, I’m wondering if you could respond to questions I have as I try to grasp how to implement a baby-step project in my history class. One of the potential topics early in the year is the American Revolution. How might I structure an open-ended question that could lead to a week-long project encouraging students to look at revolutions and why they occur? Would I ask the question: Why do revolutions happen? What would a project around such a topic look like for 7th grade learners?
Thank you for considering the questions!
Lisa
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Dear Lisa,
I would start with a collective wondering. That way you get the student’s questions about Revolution and not just yours. You get their curiosity going and create an anticipatory set toward your topic. Allow them to just wonder out loud or on paper (or online with other kids in other places). Allow them to think out of the box.
Then I would have them work in teams to organize the questions into buckets. I would let several teams work with the same set of questions so you can see how different groups organized differently. That in itself will generate conversations about perceptions and such related to your topic.
Then I would, as the teacher, take several of the buckets to organize learning around. I mean after all I am part of the learning community in my classroom right? So this piece will be my project related to the theme.
I would create hands-on, creative, student centered activities that reinforced what I knew aligned with my objectives or would be tested. The kind of learning that is project oriented and will result in artifacts that give evidence of mastery of the content.
Next, I would have teams of kids pick one of the buckets left to develop a project around. A deep learning project (that I coach) that results in the kids learning lots of tacit kinds of curriculum and not just Revolution stuff.
I would have the student team start with doing a wondering around their bucket. I would have them refine the questions and come up with 1-3 essential questions from their conversation. Things they are really interested in learning.
Hope that helps!
Now– what would you who are reading this do? How would you answer Lisa’s question?
Sheryl
Sheryl,
The terms problem based learning and project based learning are often used inter-changeably. I see them as two different strategies. Problem based is when you are dealing with a real problem that may have not been approached by others or not a large amount of people. Project based is when many have travelled the route of a problem and solutions have been openly embraced but you are still challenging children to see what they can come up with or perhaps they will conclude that someone else’s solution has a lot of credibility as the students discover through their research. What are your thoughts on the definitions of these two terms?
Karen,
Thanks for sharing your ideas about the differences between problem based and project based. I actually had never considered what you suggested. But I will give it some thought now, for sure.
My definition of these terms is a little different. For me, when project based learning is done well learners are operating as problem finders- they are doing problem based learning. They find interesting questions to solve along the learning journey when wrestling with their project. They solve real problems, not teacher fabricated ones.
I see project based learning as authentic projects based on student passion and centered around a theme or loose direction co-constructed by the teacher and students. In my experience, I bring some ideas to the table about what we are going to do and how I will align the learning to the standards or the goals and objectives I have laid out. However, knowing that once I bring the community of learners in the room to look at what I have planned – everything could/does change.
My job is to make sure we find problems to solve that are embedded in the projects learners choose to do around the curriculum or topics we are exploring. Typically, I do not know the projects or the problems in advance. We co-create those learning contracts and paths together. Now obviously, the longer I teacher and the younger the kids the more likely I can 0predict what will rock their boat or the questions they will ask. I have predetermined things I (the “teacher”) am doing and they (“the students”) have things they are doing and together we are all transparent learners.
Drats! I missed the webinar and I have so many questions about implementing a meaty, authentic project. Any chance there was a recording made of the webinar?
Yes, we will send out the recording on Monday.
I missed the webinar on Friday due to car trouble. I did sign up -can I still see have access to listening to the webinar?
Same as last two….I missed it but I didn’t get a link to “listen” to it….
Is this webinar archived?