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"roject-based learning (PBL) is a powerful tool to promote student engagement. It allows students to investigate real-world challenges and problems and create high-quality work for authentic audiences. It allows students to work collaboratively and individually to learn the content and skills they need to be "future ready." Books by John Larmer and Suzie Boss are great tools to get started designing these high quality projects, and educators can reinvent projects of the past to make sure they are truly engaging. Here are three tips to consider as you design and redesign PBL projects for your students to make them even more engaging and focused on learning."

"Teaching a new language to non-native speakers may be one of the most challenging educational jobs out there, so ELL teachers can use all of the help they can get! Thankfully, many excellent resources for ELL and ESL exist online, from full-service websites to reference tools and communities, all designed to make the task of educating ELL students just a little bit easier and more effective."

"Have you tried Project-based Learning in your history or social studies classroom? Was it awesome? Was it challenging? And, if you haven't tried to implement PBL, what's stopping you? Predetermined curricular standards? Pushback from admin? A difficult fit with the school culture? We'd like to argue that you can and should implement Project-based Learning in your history classroom. It doesn't have to be perfect. Take some elements of PBL and try them a bit at a time. Small steps can turn a stale unit into a truly meaningful, real-world learning experience - even if it's not pure PBL."

"Effective Instructional Strategies for a Model Classroom ... The Curriculum Project provides K - 12 educators with training, materials, and software designed to bring about increased levels of student success. Our instructional strategies and emphasis on the implementation of state standards help teachers to refine their practices to provide differentiated experiences for learners of all types."

Project-based learning (PBL) naturally lends itself to differentiated instruction. By design, it is student-centered, student-driven, and gives space for teachers to meet the needs of students in a variety of ways. PBL can allow for effective differentiation in assessment as well as daily management and instruction. PBL experts will tell you this, but I often hear teachers ask for real examples, specifics to help them contextualize what it "looks like" in the classroom. We all need to try out specific ideas and strategies to get our brains working in a different context. Here are some specific differentiation strategies to use during a PBL project.

If you had three wishes for STEM education, what would those be? These are three of my priorities: Classrooms would be places of exploration, creativity, and discourse. Learning would be meaningfully connected to the world outside the school walls. Teachers would be prepared and empowered to design engaging STEM curricula and assessments. If those are your wishes as well, then here's some encouraging news!

"This site was created by Dr. Alice Christie to share an exciting new approach to teaching and learning. Enabled by Web 2.0 tools, GoogleTreks™ allows teachers and students to synthesize information in one easy-to-use map that places text, pictures, audio files, video files, and much more in one central location."