Group items tagged

"Creation-based tasks promote higher-order thinking, encourage collaboration, and connect students to real-world learning. Whether you're teaching in a project-based learning classroom, engaging students with authentic assessments, or committed to pushing students to analyze and synthesize, providing opportunities for creation is a must."

A worldwide hands-on, primary and secondary school-based science and education program. GLOBE's vision promotes and supports students, teachers and scientists to collaborate on inquiry-based investigations of the environment and the Earth system working in close partnership with NASA and NSF Earth System Science Projects (ESSPs) in study and research about the dynamics of Earth's environment.

Play, design and share games.  Focuses on game design

a very popular web-based game design environment. Global Kids http://olpglobalkids.org/ is using it to run social benefits game design contests and badging programs. They are getting 100+ new game design entries per week. From the parents' guide: Gamestar Mechanic is currently supported by a partnership between the Institute of Play and E-Line Media. The game was originally developed by Gamelab in partnership with the Institute of Play and the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab (AADLC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Initial funding for the game and companion learning guides came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The design of the game is based on research by some of the leading academics in the field including Katie Salen (Executive Director of the Institute of Play and curriculum author for the New York City Public School Quest To Learn) and James Paul Gee (author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy).

This site has students creating games from scratch and putting them out into the world for feedback within the Gamestar Mechanic community. Students use math, problem solving, writing skills and more to make their games interesting. I think this could be used in the classroom as a theme-based project or just to get students interested in coding.

At several of our previous meetings we have used a "Prensky Scale" to examine lessons/projects. It's time to kick that up a notch with the TPaCK framework which helps educators label the knowledge a teacher needs to teach. Though the three knowledge bases of Technological Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge, and Content Knowledge are easy for teachers to grasp, the interplay of them is often subtle and distinctions can be hard to see at first. This WebQuest is designed to first familiarize you with the TPaCK framework, then to examine and discuss examples that combine the three bases to different degrees and success, and finally to help you define the areas of interplay in your own words.

"Any research based or inquiry-based project seems to work well for me. I enjoy leading the children through the process of developing a research question. It's always interesting to hear what goes on in the minds of these inquisitive learners. Last year my grade 8 (14-year-olds) were working on the impact of government systems on individual and Societies. Students took up the case studies of India and Pakistan, some of them worked on Arab-Israeli conflict, and yet another group picked the Berlin Wall and its impact on the population."

Stupski Fndtn staff + McREL researchers ask 2 questions: (1) How can teachers adapt the principles of effective pedagogy to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of all learners in order to help Our Kids be challened, motivated, and successful? (2) How can teachers create structured, challenging, yet nurturing classroom environments to ensure that Our Kids are engaged and successful learners? KEY FINDINGS: adaptive and differentiated instruction (theory and methodologies) in culturally relevant classroom that allows for student "role fluidity" + teacher skill in finding gaps in knowledge/skills + motivating students through engaging projects and targeted instruction (academically rigorous and nurturing) PLUS fac devt must be supported by and inclusive of school leadership. a Design Collaborative might act on 5 options: (1) Support teachers to better utilize methods and theories of culturally relevant pedagogy and differentiated instruction, (2) Implement a pedagogical program based on the notion of "role fluidity" to give students a central voice in the classroom, (3) Use technology to engage students and enhance pedagogy, (4) Guide teachers in creating academically rigorous and positive classroom learning environments, (5) Implement pedagogical programs based on developing higher order thinking and subject-specific skills. Report by Kerry Englert, Helen Apthorp, Matthew Seebaum. Dated Oct 2009

The maker movement and with it maker-centered learning brings new possibilities and challenges into the classroom. It has spawned makerspaces and students are busy designing and making products. The danger with all this frenzied making is that it is very easy to miss the point, to focus on the product and not the journey.  

Oracle's website for Thinkquest, a competition based on Science competition for K-12

Projects provide a flexible framework for engaging students in exploring curricular topics and developing important 21st century skills, such as communication, teamwork, and technology skills. In addition, students are motivated by the fun and creative format and the opportunity to make new friends around the world. For teachers, a school portal enables quick and easy management of student accounts and review of project work.

PBL bloggers

Templates for designing project-based learning

Web-based group project on LOTF: collect evidence on culpability of a character from the novel.

Neat project - gives each group member a job that can be suited to his/her interests and strengths!

In Project Based Learning (PBL), students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. Rigorous projects help students learn key academic content and practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication & critical thinking). 

Nice concise article on project based learning

great ideas for project based learning

Agree with you Kevin.

Jeffrey McClurken's contribution to CHE's ProfHacker series; great collaborative learning tool