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"One of my goals for this upcoming year is to create a project-based learning (PBL) unit for my World History class. In order to wrap my head around this concept I have been lurking in different Twitter chats and reading articles about PBL. Still, the concept seemed foreign to me. It wasn't until I was running this morning and my mind was a million miles away (an estimate only) thinking about the new Muppet movie that things began to connect."

"Comunicar es poner en común. Uno comunica sentimientos, ideas, datos, etc. En general el término se refiere a cosas inmateriales, o mejor dicho "inasibles". Cuando son bienes en tres dimensiones se utiliza mejor el termino "intercambio". Esto no quita que algunos especialistas generalicen y se refieran a "comunicación" para nombrar cualquier clase de interacción. Pero me parece complicar las cosas. Así que, si no hay objeciones, dejemos esta palabra para significar cualquier clase de intercambio de bienes no-materiales, preferentemente información"

Virtual Worlds Forum blog Exclusive Report: Tweens and Virtual Worlds Comments [0] | 14 October 2008 Dubit Research has produced an exclusive report for the Virtual Worlds Forum giving key statistics for how tweens use virtual worlds and their attitude towards advertising. Dubit Research, a youth marketing agency, runs a standing panel of 600 7-12 year olds in the UK, and has asked them a series of questions relating to which virtual worlds they use and how they feel about advertising in virtual worlds. The results show that 73% of British 7-12 year olds are using some sort of virtual world. Club Penguin leads the pack with 43%, Habbo following with 27%. There is remarkably little fragmentation in the market: only 8% use a virtual world other than the top 10. What surprised me most about the statistics is how even the gender split is on many virtual worlds - entirely even on Club Penguin, and similar on most other games, although Runescape is, as one would expect, far more popular with boys.

Aussie EduBlogger Jenny Luca - great post about learning to present. Jenny is presenting on the Will Richardson tour in Australia.

Our 6th grade collaborative project with a focus on global issues. We are looking for schools to join us with the hopes of working on some collaborative lyrics in Google Docs, remixing audio tracks shared between schools and possibly a skype session. We are running the project 5 times this year for 6 weeks at a time. Email me if you are interested i taking part at one point. jennifergarcia@abc-net.edu.sv

say:love me!

In 1968, two researchers conducted a fascinating study that proved the extent to which teacher expectations influence student performance. Positive expectations influence performance positively, and negative expectations influence performance negatively. In educational circles, this has been termed the Pygmalion Effect, or more colloquially, a self-fulfilling prophecy. What has always intrigued me about this study is specifically what the teachers did to communicate that they believed a certain set of students had "unusual potential for academic growth." The research isn't overly explicit about this, but it indicates that the teachers "may have paid closer attention to the students, and treated them differently in times of difficulty." This begs the following questions: Why can't teachers treat all of their students like this? How do we communicate to students whether we believe in them or not?

As most of you know, the uber gods of PBL are BIE. I was first introduced to the BIE PBL 'model' from mate Dean Groom who handed me over what I still refer to as my 'PBL Bible' - a ring-binder full of the BIE Freebies that help teachers plan effective projects and keep students on track as they move through the different phases of each project. The cool thing is that you can use as much or as little as you want … PBL is a very personal process that (like all good teaching) should be tailored to the expertise and needs of the teacher and students. However, there are 8 Elements of Project Based Learning that can be called the 'essential elements' of PBL … keeping an eye on these and 'testing' your project design based on them can help you determine if what you're creating isn't just a 'project'. I really like this statement from BIE contrasting PBL and traditional 'projects':

A typical unit with a "project" add-on begins by presenting students with knowledge and concepts and then, once gained, giving students the opportunity to apply them. Project Based Learning begins with the vision of an end product or presentation. This creates a context and reason to learn and understand the information and concepts.

You know the hardest thing about teaching with project-based learning? Explaining it to someone. It seems to me that whenever I asked someone the definition of PBL, the description was always so complicated that my eyes would begin to glaze over immediately. So to help you in your own musings, I've devised an elevator speech to help you clearly see what's it all about.

When a teacher, school, or district tells parents and community members, "We're going to do Project Based Learning!" the response may vary. You're lucky if some say, "Great news! Students need to be taught differently these days!" but a more typical response might be: What's Project Based Learning?  That's not how I was taught. Why do we need PBL, if (a) our school is already doing well, or (b) what we really need is a better literacy/math program to raise test scores?  Isn't that just a trendy new thing that doesn't really work?  How is this going to affect my child (and me)?  Basically, they're asking for the what, why, and how. Here are some successful strategies we've seen to answer these questions.