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"Video conferencing and chat tools can be a wonderful instructional resource, as most educators know. You can bring the outside world and guests into your classroom, enable a sick or disabled student to present from home and interact with the class, get to know online students better and have more constructive conversations than voice alone permits. The possibilities are endless!"

"f you're planning to give project-based learning a try during the coming school year, you may hope a spark of inspiration will strike during the summer months that will lead to a memorable PBL experience. And maybe that's just the excuse that hard-working teachers need to take a hike or daydream by a pool. But here's another surefire strategy for PBL planning: borrow project ideas from your colleagues and adapt or remix to fit your context. Here are ten project ideas that I've gathered from a busy season of summer conferences and professional development events (including ISTE 2015 and PBL World, an annual event hosted by the Buck Institute for Education). By sharing their thinking at this early draft stage, teachers invite feedback from peers. That's another strategy for effective project planning. (Most project ideas were shared anonymously and some are mashups of similar suggestions. Thanks to the creative teachers behind these PBL plans.)"

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"Samantha Shires, a middle-school social studies teacher in Guilford County, North Carolina, wants her students to understand that history doesn't unfold in a series of unrelated events. "History is messy and chaotic," she says. "Students need to see how events are connected and interrelated." ChronoZoom, a free tool developed by Microsoft Research and an international team of collaborators, is helping her students visually explore the history of, well, just about everything, from the Big Bang right up to the present day."

"If interdisciplinary project-based learning is a goal for you and your students this school year, you might want to start with questions that put a premium on place. For example: Where are bicycle accidents most likely to happen in your community? Where's the best spot to watch for migrating Monarch butterflies? What's the safest evacuation route in the event of a natural disaster? How have the neighborhoods of New Orleans changed after Hurricane Katrina? To investigate such questions, students would need to gather and analyze data, look for patterns, think critically, and communicate their understanding with maps and other visual aids. In the process, they would also make connections across content areas and deepen their geo-literacy skills."