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In this post I wish to share with you some of the top sites I have found to be useful on the internet that promote true PBL.

Edutopia PBL - Edutopia is a site containing outstanding educational content for teachers. It contains an area devoted to Project Based Learning.

PBL-Online Is a one stop solution for Project Based Learning! You'll find all the resources you ne​ed to design and manage high quality projects for middle and high school students.

While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.

This new media environment can be enormously disruptive to our current teaching methods and philosophies.

Our physical structures were built prior to an age of infinite information, our social structures formed to serve different purposes than those needed now, and the cognitive structures we have developed along the way now struggle to grapple with the emerging possibilities.

The lecture format is an institution at most universities and as money gets tight, it’s also is a favourite way for schools to spread thin resources. Despite its long history, University of Guelph business dean Julia Christensen Hughes argues the traditional lecture is not the best way to learn, pointing to decades of research.

What’s wrong with lectures?

When the lecture model began, the Internet didn’t exist or even the printing press. It was an oral tradition for transferring knowledge. Now information is ubiquitous. If you are curious about something you just Google it.

What is “disruptive change”?

On April 28, 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, and on April 3, 2008, less than five years later, it became the largest music retailer in the US, with 50 million customers and 4 billion songs sold. Then about two years down the road, this past February, Apple more than doubled that sales figure to 10 billion songs. This is what I consider to be disruptive change.

As educators, we must ask: Could there be a parallel in our own industry, or the potential for other disruptive changes ahead? What might higher education look like in a future filled with disruptive change?

an article from Newsweek titled “the Creativity Crisis“. It begins with the assertion that for the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining.

The Newsweek article cites a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. And yet it is declining (apparently), both in society as a whole, and in our schools in particular. The authors identify two of the possible reasons for the decline…

the impact of television and the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities

Mixable, is positioned as an e-learning environment that empowers students, and can be used as a little study room and course library inside Facebook.

Drawing on course registration data, Mixable invites students in virtual rooms with classmates in each of their courses. Once there, it lets them post and start comment threads about links, files, and other materials that might be relevant to the course — or not. The point is, there is no administrative authority determining what should (or must) be posted or discussed, and students are free to abstain from participating — just like on Facebook. Professors can join in, but they don’t run the show. And students can choose to make posts viewable by some classmates and not others. “In essence, the conversation is owned by the student,” says Kyle Bowen, the director of informatics at Purdue.

Purdue CIO Gerry McCartney says it made sense to position it as an application within Facebook. He cites the quote attributed to the bank robber Willie Sutton who, asked why he robbed banks, said "because that’s where the money is." Says McCartney: “So why go to Facebook? Because that’s where the students are.”

Pepperdine University has made the decision to adopt Sakai as the single, university-wide learning management system (LMS), effective Jan. 1, 2011.

because of the significant cost savings that will accrue as a result of this adoption, our decision highlights an approach for proactively dealing with the economic uncertainty arising from the "new normal" that now affects all higher education institutions.

Although the LMS often comprises the "third rail" of our technology services, a very large majority of our faculty and students not only support this change, but are applauding it.

What can colleges learn from Facebook?

Where Facebook has shown unique value is as a data-gathering tool. Never has a website been able to learn so much about its users. And that is where higher education should be taking notes, said Angie McQuaig, director of data innovation at the University of Phoenix, at the 2010 Educause conference on Friday.

If Facebook can use analytics to revolutionize advertising in the Web era, McQuaig suggested, colleges can use the same principles to revolutionize online learning.

Those in higher education who continue hand-wringing over the relative merits of online learning and other technology-driven platforms will soon find themselves left in the dust of an up-and-coming generation of students who are seeking knowledge outside academe. Such was an emerging consensus view here Monday, as college leaders gathered for the TIAA-CREF Institute's 2010 Higher Education Leadership Conference.

“We're still trying to fit the Web into our educational paradigm.… I just don't think that's going to work,” said Mary Spilde, president of Lane Community College, in Eugene, Ore.

several panelists alluded here to the possibility that if colleges don't change the way they do business, then students will change the way colleges do business.

The film Waiting for Superman

argues that teachers are at the center of the problem and that the solution is charter schools.

But it’s wrong to blame teachers, who are usually a) underpaid, and b) striving to do the best with the limited resources they are given. Nor does the research show that charter schools achieve better outcomes.  The root of the malaise in our schools is the outmoded model of pedagogy.  Teachers and text books are assumed to be the source of knowledge.  Teachers “teach” – they impart knowledge to their students, who through practice and assignments learn how to perform well on tests.