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ating Essential Questions (07:01) Coming up with an essential question (also called a guiding or driving question) is one of the first key steps in designing a project. For a fun tool to help craft effective driving questions, check out BIE's "tubric."

BIE's Project Planner Tutorial (02:02) BIE offers a powerul and simple online tool, the Project Planner, for organizing your ideas while putting together a project. You must sign up for a free account, but you can save and print your work to your profile.

Tips For Building Projects (06:17) The audio is a little low on this teacher-produced screen-capture video, but it does a great job outlining the basics things you should be thinking about in your initial project planning stages.

Think Forward: Assessment (07:26) Assessment for project-based learning requires a more comprehensive approach. The poor audio quality is worth it, to hear real teachers describe exactly how they assess for learning throughout a project. From Manor New Tech High School's Think Forward PBL Institute.

roblem-Based Learning for the 21st Century Classroom (05:22) This nice overview from ASCD goes into some of the obstacles to project-based learning, and then shows teachers sharing strategies for addressing those challenges.

cheduling for Project-Based Learning (05:35) Three high school teachers talk about how they re-structured their day to accommodate integrated PBL. Not everyone has the flexibility shown here, but it's fascinating to see how these teachers broke it down.

How PBLU Works (01:15) Hungry for more lessons on PBL? PBLU is an incredible resource offered by BIE. See how you can access two-week training courses and Common-Core-aligned projects that you can modify and customize.

The Museum Box site allows you to build  an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. Students can display anything from a text file to a movie. My students will be using this platform to argue their thesis, rather than writing a traditional essay.

My students have started designing our curriculum units. Seriously. While transitioning to our current unit, we discussed the possibilities as a class.

Before the technology/constructivist shift in my classsroom, I would have taught all of this quite traditionally. We’d read books, answer questions, and then address those questions in class. I’d lecture a lot, with supplemental grammar lessons here and there, and I’d include some type of artistic project to achieve viewing and representing objectives. The whole design would have been extremely teacher centered. And at the end of it all, I’d hope they learned something about writing and thinking. Instead, inquiry and technology are a natural part of our English classes.

schools

Media

Social

Our students are gravitating (on their own) to Social Media

Learning for the 22nd century

Social Media adds so many layers of depth

Communication has changed in the world around us.

Information has changed our lives.

The lines between our lives and “digital lives” are blurring

The world is shrinking.

Whether you only want to send out a couple tweets or perhaps would like to own a bigge

build relationships, seek information, make sense of observations and share ideas through an intelligent use of new technologies.

continuous process of seeking, sensing-making, and sharing.

Don't treat technology as if it is a fad

on't focus just on teaching their content

Don't work in isolation

Don't allow what's been done in the past get in the way of what can be done in the future