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Bożena Kraj
Project Based Learning Knowledge in action – our paths of ICT I have always wanted to do something exciting, something creative, something artistic. As a girl I was taught to play the old piano, my grandma had; I really liked drawing and painting and I loved writing compositions because I dreamt of being a journalist. In fact, I decided to follow in the footsteps of my mum, who as a teacher, had the best of all – she was loved by her students. Since the beginning of my school career, the role of a teacher has changed, although this feeling of being liked ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Kids Who Code: Exploring and Evaluating Coding Tools The project is well underway in our classroom! Our class has been exploring coding for the last couple of weeks. We've learned that coding is "giving computers instructions/directions" and students have had the chance to try out a variety of coding tools. My students have learned a lot (and so have I!) Here is what we've been up to: Exploration Time: Students have used different devices to explore a variety of coding tools including Lightbot, Hopscotch, Kodable, Code Monkey, ScratchJr., Tynker...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning The Pigeon Meets Flat Matt Once you get the PBL train rolling, it's hard to stop and sometimes... projects collide! My class has been working on the since earlier this spring and they are doing a great job of planning, writing, illustrating and publishing their own books. When we were invited to join the "" project, we enthusiastically accepted. Eventually the two projects collided and The Pigeon met Flat Matt. Here's the details: Matt, also known as "Flat Matt", was sent to us by a 1st Class (six and seven year olds) at ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Progress with the Pigeon Project If you haven’t yet checked out the Pigeon Project, read about our latest learning adventures and hop over to my classroom blog to see some wonderful student-authored books that my class has recently published! (If you’re up for a romantic story, read . Or perhaps you need a reminder about manners? Try reading . If you love the farm or just enjoy the Pigeon’s hilarious antics, read “. Maybe just read them all if you have time; my students are happy to share their books with you!) Here's our ...
Minnia Feng
Project Based Learning I really didn't know that... Learning math could actually be fun! MSEN Community, have you heard about Jumpido? I was amazed when I first saw the video introducing this really cool app. To many of us growing up, math existed in the form of ink on a page, dull numbers that didn't mean much as they lived in a separate world within the textbook. Now with technology, we can make math come to life through platforms such as Xbox Kinect, which tracks movement and allows students to solve math problems through motion! Using ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning One Hour, No Power Challenge My Grade 1s have been working on reducing our classroom energy consumption as part of the . One part of is the One Hour, No Power challenge. The task was to go without power in our classroom for an hour or try to accumulate multiple hours without power. Student Goal Setting: Students chose to aim for accumulating 10 hours without power. For this challenge, the description stated "One hour of no power is defined as one classroom not using power for one hour. That is to say, if you have two ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning A Strong Start to the Track Your Trash project! Our latest focuses on tracking our garbage and finding ways to reduce the amount of trash we create in our classroom. We are learning about measurement right now, so measuring the amount of trash fit well with our current math goals. Our class is good at using a balance scale for comparative measurement, but we had to learn to use a different scale to measure the amount of garbage in our classroom garbage cans. I purchased a new bathroom scale to try, but our garbage was too light to ...
Suzie Boss
Project Based Learning Find Your Starting Place for PBL If one of your goals for this school year is to give project-based learning a try, now’s the time for a check-in. Have you introduced at least one in-depth inquiry project yet? If so, what have you—and your students—learned from the experience? If not, you may find that spring offers an ideal time to remodel a traditional unit of study into a project that puts students in the driver’s seat of their own learning. Recently, I listened to a team of three grade-one teachers reflect on their first ...
Chris Gerry
Project Based Learning At Last! A School Takes Character Seriously I have been talking for quite a while about the importance of non cognitive skills in schools driving academic and social success. Mostly people just refer to such programmes using the term 'Character'. And here is an example of a school that is actually doing something: They are copying a programme run by KIPP schools in the USA. Is this a breakthrough perhaps? Could you do something similar? Let us know!...
Cheryl Douglas
Project Based Learning Human Impact on the Environment It is often the unexpected outcomes that are the most exciting aspect of project based learning. Last year I ran a collaborative project between 12 schools in conjunction with the Environmental Education department of the City of Cape Town and have been lucky enough to be been selected to present this project, Human Impact on the Environment, at the World Forum in Barcelona next week. Schools partnered up to research aspects of Human Impact on the Environment and then made a short video on their...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Reflecting on Another Successful Project Although reflection is an ongoing part of the project based learning model in our classroom, I want to take time at the end of this special to think about the learning and teaching involved. Some reflections from my perspective: I loved the enthusiasm! Students and teachers alike got really excited about our Olympics project. The interesting sports, inspiring athletes and accessible live coverage were a few things that seemed to really grab our attention and “hook us” on this project! Not to...
Project Based Learning MÉTODO DE OCHO PASOS PARA LA ENSEÑANZA DE LA ROBÓTICA EDUCATIVA La creatividad, la colaboración y el pensamiento crítico y reflexivo, son la base de solución de problemas reales y actuales. Presento ocho pasos para la solución de problemas en la enseñanza de la robótica educativa. Todos los proyectos deben estar fundamentados por una teoría, ley o principio. Observación (antecedentes, recolección de datos) Investigación (Duda, pregunta, problema, hipótesis) Diseño/Construcción (Experimentos) Programación/Edición Prueba: Ensayo / Error (Resultados) ...
Chris Gerry
Project Based Learning More on Intelligent Machines Eric Beynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee have just written a book that is attracting a lot of attention. It is called: The Second Machine Age: Work Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. They chart a familiar territory with regards to the impact of Moore’s Law – the doubling of computing capacity and halving of price roughly every eighteen months. This has been going on for forty years and shows little sign of slowing down. They make two interesting points about this. ...
Narine Isakhanyan
Project Based Learning Simple of international project We want to present one of the international project "tale King Lir's Children". Alex Shcherbacheva is our english teacher (school 1329, Moscow), she shared for us a brief history of how our joint projects with schools from other countries. Bellow her post: "My big adventure began with a meeting. During one of my adventures around the world I met an enthusiastic Irish teacher, Anne McErlane, who works with the International Pushkin Trust. She suggested working together, so that our pupils could ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Designing Postcards for Our Olympians My Grade 1 students have continued to work with Mrs. Caldwell’s Oak Lake Kindergarten class to learn about the Olympics. Many students have done research at home with their families and made guest blog posts sharing their findings. We have also done some research and posts together as a class. Students worked in small groups to build knowledge of the and recorded their new understandings using . While we were on a Skype call discussing our project with the Kindergartens, students had the neat ...
Donna Adams Román
Project Based Learning What's the Most Valuable Trait in Learning? If I was to choose one single quality that helps people the most, not only with success in school but also with happiness throughout life, it would be internal motivation. Internal motivation is what drives passion. It drives the quest for knowledge, it drives interest and it drives repeat exposure to something…which in turn creates expertise. Some adults never possess that in their lifetime, and I think it has a lot to do with how we structure our teaching…therefore our learning. I have a niece...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Olympics Project: The Momentum Continues As I explained in my , my students and their families have really taken ownership of our Olympics project and they have been working on research at home. More students have come to school with information to create their own blog posts! (You can view the latest student posts .) I am looking forward to helping students share their learning and their enthusiasm for this project is really motivating for me! In addition to all the great homework going on, we have also been working on research at ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Olympics Project is Taking Off! Our Olympics project is off to a strong start! The morning after our , I had planned a “normal” morning of mini-lessons, Daily 5 English Language Arts, guided reading groups and student conferencing. As we gathered at the carpet for our first mini-lesson, one of my students announced that he “had to get something” and quickly returned with a note paper full of information about the Olympics. The student explained that he had talked to his Dad about the Olympics and found out lots of facts for...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Olympics Project: Modeling Internet Research & Encouraging Digital Citizenship My hardworking and curious group of Grade 1s has jumped on board for our Olympics learning project. After our Skype call with the OLCS Kindergartens on Tuesday, our class did some research together to answer two of their inquiry questions. This allowed me to model some basic research. Students suggested we use the internet to find information, so I modeled a web search and read aloud information from a relevant website. After listening, some rereading and discussion, students were ready to ...
Patricia Ragan
Project Based Learning DREAM BIG, DESIGN THE DREAM AND GO FOR IT! How to Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate a Project Based Learning Activity DESIGN, DEVELOP, IMPLEMENT AND EVALUATE The fundamentals of Instructional Design are design, develop, implement and evaluate. That is my perspective as a graduate from Syracuse University’s Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation program. The purpose of this blog post is to explain my Instructional Design (ID) process in an effort to help educators with creating learning activities that are highly effective and prepare students for 21st Century challenges. PROJECT BASED LEARNING What ...
Narine Isakhanyan
Project Based Learning Example of social project Project Based Learning allow our teachers to use modern technology and group works at the lesson. Usually children work on transdisciplinarity project. As a basis Intel strategy "Study together" and using the different Microsoft tools. An important component of the project is the social orientation of the solution of community problems. I'd like to tell about one of project, which we made with students of 1 grade, it's name "Our city", whose main objective was to involve students in the ...
Chris Gerry
Project Based Learning At The Year's Turn: Next Steps.... Take a look at this: Sugata Mitra makes some significant points about education. The traditional model that we still see in most schools can trace its ancestry back to the days of the British Empire. It was an excellent model then for a world with poor communications and the system produced identikit individuals to service the needs of the empire. But today something else is needed. And that’s the rub. We can all agree with this. See Dan Buckley here on the WISE conference this year: But the...
Devon Caldwell
Project Based Learning Spreading Christmas Cheer to Our Community Elders When my students and I attended , we had some extra time. So we decided to visit my 89 year-old grandma at the seniors' residence for a few minutes. Well her face just lit up and she laughed and smiled more than I had seen in ages--the antics of my five year-olds delighted her. They told her little stories and danced and sang, all without any prompting from me. So when they asked to go and visit my grandma again last week, I asked them if there were any senior citizens in Oak Lake that we could ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Learning from a Failure: Cookies gone wrong Since my Grade 1s were scooping for until the end of the day, I had to put some cookies in the oven to bake after students left. (They were so enthusiastic that they got a little ahead of the oven!) When I took the pumpkin molasses cookies out of the oven, I knew there was a problem… The recipe said the pumpkin molasses should crack on top and we expected a gingersnap-like cookie and what I removed from the oven looked like big, brown splats. When deciding what to do after school on Friday, ...
Project Based Learning NARRACIONES ANIMADAS Y ROBOTICA EDUCATIVA Esta experiencia se ha implementado en todos los niveles del Complejo Educativo Católico “Nuestra Señora del Rosario”, donde los estudiantes conforman equipo de trabajo e investigan temas de robótica pedagógica que han sido previamente asignados. A partir de la información recopilada, los estudiantes redactan un guión o una narración con la que dan a conocer la temática que han investigado (fábula, leyenda, poema, cuento y canción), los personajes son creados aplicando diferentes técnicas que ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Farmer Appreciation Day: Baking Cookies Once we returned from our successful trip, we were ready to start baking cookies for . We had a quick meeting at the learning carpet so I could go over the plan with students and review expectations and rules for baking. Since it was during our usual math time, I set up cookie baking as one of our math centers so students could take turns baking. During centers, students were able to mix up 3 batches of cookies. PLUS, they did lots of math learning at each center! After recess, we moved ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Farmer Appreciation Day: Grocery Shopping Once we'd made our , it was time to get the other ingredients to bake cookies for . As a reading and writing activity, we reread the we'd selected and wrote a list of ingredients we would need. There were some leftover supplies from previous projects, so students then went through the supplies and created a shorter list of groceries they'd need to buy. Next, we were off for a walking field trip to the grocery store. We walked to the local Co-op grocery store and worked together to pick out and ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Farmer Appreciation Day: Making Pumpkin Puree When my students decided they’d like to make their big pumpkin into pumpkin cookies, we asked a parent who grows pumpkins to share a “tried and true” recipe. We read the recipe together as part of our study. One of the ingredients in the pumpkin cookie recipe confused students – it called for “pumpkin puree” and most of us didn’t know what that was. After we did some research and figured out what the recipe was asking for, we decided that we would need to find out how to turn our pumpkin into...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Farmer Appreciation Day: Reading Recipes Class Decision Making: We are planning to make farmers a special treat for the we are hosting. After much discussion, and a couple of rounds of voting, we decided to bake chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin cookies. With that decision made, we got right to work on the preparation required! A side note: A high school student that grew pumpkins in her family garden donated a large pumpkin to our class before Halloween. Students decided it would be unfair if one student got to carve the big ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Action Plan: Making Invitations Since my students decided to plan a , we've been dedicating time each day to our project learning. As a shared writing activity, I helped students write invitations to send to local farmers and posters to advertise our event in local businesses. After the writing was printed, each student added his or her own designs and colors to the posters and invitations we sent out. All of our invitations have been sent and students are working on putting posters up this week. This shared writing activity ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Action Plan: Farmer Appreciation Day As you may have read in my , my Grade 1 students this year were interested in working with Kindergarten class to help farmers. My students identified stress and lack of appreciation for farmers as problems. (Of course, they said those things in Grade 1 vocabulary “farmers work hard” “they grow our food” “they are important and special” and “it’s been a really long harvest this year” were some of the comments in my classroom). After much discussion and collaboration between our classrooms, our ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Selecting a Topic of Interest & Identifying a Problem After our class has some ideas for project based learning, the next step is to narrow down the topics. Since our projects are inter-classroom, we do this step while on a Skype video conference call with Mrs. Caldwell’s kindergartens. To select our topic of interest this year, we selected four of our best project ideas and voted on them. Mrs. Caldwell’s class all voted to help cats and the most popular idea in my classroom was helping farmers. With the topic of farming in mind, we talked about ...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Small project, big benefits: Our "Fill in the Blank Wall" Inspired by shared by Chris Gerry, I encouraged my students to create a "wall" with me. We started with the sentence "Our class is ____________" and we all contributed our ideas to fill in the blank. Since my students are 6 and 7 years old, I helped students with spelling and vocabulary (for example: how can we say "good at art" in a shorter way). The students came up with a wonderful variety of descriptive words. I'd already posted the beautiful that students made collaboratively on one of...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Brainstorming After we’ve done the , we start brainstorming project ideas with our classes. Since we believe in the value of collaboration, our brainstorming sessions have always been a team effort. We do inter-classroom brainstorming with students in class. This kind of collaboration has been made possible by tools like . Using video conferencing, we can see each other and share our screens while brainstorming. At this stage, our job as teachers is to encourage all project ideas and help record them. (Of ...
Eman Yousef
Project Based Learning Project Based Learning Can’t be Achieved without Tools. I’d like to share my next opinion about project based learning on the following topic. Project based learning can’t be achieved without tools. I think from my experience at classroom that teachers can’t achieve active learning without using the new tools of Microsoft. Teachers should use the Learning Suite to make subjects active and lasts and make students easily to accept new theory or new learning steps. Feeling joy and happiness inside classrooms come from using Learning Suite. So, teachers...
Leah Obach
Project Based Learning Our Project Launch If you’ve read my , you know that our project based learning usually follows a general sequence of steps. As our project unfolds, I want to share what these steps look like in hopes of helping other educators guide their students in project based learning this year. As October begins, we have done our “project launch” and “collaborative brainstorming” steps. However, we’ve done project launches at different times of year, so don’t be afraid to delve in at any point during your school year! ...
Chris Gerry
Project Based Learning More Help Needed With PBL! The World Health Organisation has some chilling facts on its website about obesity and overweight. It is an epidemic that is sweeping the world with obesity rates doubling since 1980. They estimate that in 2008 there were 1.4 billion overweight and obese people over the age of twenty on the planet. In 2011 40 million children under five were identified as being obese. This is the first generation in human history that is unlikely to live as long as their parents. Yet obesity is entirely ...
Chris Gerry
Project Based Learning TEACHING: A VOCATION, OR JUST A JOB? A recent Populus poll in the UK suggested that 62 percent of the 1,723 interviewed believed that teachers should be paid according to performance. For 43 percent this meant how good their teaching was based on an annual appraisal and for 29 percent performance should be based on pupil exam results. Such beliefs reflect a growing idea around the world that market based approaches to public sector pay is both a good idea and something that will improve pupil performance. Against this backdrop ...
Alan Mongey
Project Based Learning STEM - Project & Interest Based Learning Approach We are opening a new school and intend to introduce a new short course for all students enrolling in September. We have 160 12-13yr olds starting in the school as the first cohort. They will have an 80minute class per week to be held in a large open learning space. there will be two groups of 80 students with 4 Science/ Maths/ Technology teachers guiding them. All students will have Windows 7 netbooks, access to Microsoft Lync and Office 365. While initially there will be some sort of structure ...
Mary Meucci
Project Based Learning Learning by doing SMART Boards helping St Mary’s College (a Microsoft Mentor School) to achieve high levels of success in STEM subjects. “You learn by doing,” says Paul Wade, ICT Manager at St Mary’s College in Derry, “so when it comes to ICT our motto is ‘let’s give it a go’!” This pioneering spirit has proved highly effective, and the imaginative use of SMART Board® interactive whiteboards and other interactive learning technologies has played a key role in helping this award-winning school reach such excellent ...