Blog Post 9- What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning?

This week our class was instructed to answer the question what both, teachers and students, can teach us about Project Based Learning. Upon reviewing the post The Seven Essentials of Project Based Learning the main message was that students should be passionate about what they are learning about. Often, students believe class assignments and projects to be useless, because they feel there is no true reason that they need to learn the material being presented, other than the fact that it will, "be on the test." However, by allowing the students to go about the project in their own way, as long as it is still meeting the teachers required standards, the students are much more likely to be more passionate about the project. Teachers in this type of project can often learn from students, because the students often bring new concepts and ideas ,which may or may not be known to the teacher beforehand. This can be accomplished by the teacher allowing his or her students to explore the topic in their own creative way and bring their own research and conclusions to the table.

An example of this can be found in the video, Two Students Solve The Ketchup Problem The two students in this video had a passion for ketchup,but they were constantly frustrated with the ever present water that always seemed to come out when trying to get the ketchup. This was the driving question, you can learn how to effectively develop a driving question by watching the video, The Driving Question. They ended up developing a new cap to go on ketchup bottles, they took something they were passionate about and were able to develop a solution.

Another key question to keep in mind when developing your PBL is what exactly keeps your students motivated. A video that shows multiple students opinions in what keeps them motivated in school can be found in the video, What Motivates Students? A few examples of the students answers included future success, encouragement from teachers, and outside school activities that depended on their school performance. If you are questioning if weather PBL is the right way to go for your class, 10 Sites That Support Digital Collaboration in the Classroom is a great place to get information as well as ideas for PBLs.