Top 8 PBL News Stories

 

June 27 - July 1, 2016

Each Friday we post a list of our favorite articles, blog posts, and other resources we’ve run across that relate to Project Based Learning.

Here’s what we liked this week:

At ISTE 2016, a Big Focus on Games, Projects, and Engaging Students
EdWeek Market Brief
A report by Sean Cavanagh on International Society for Technology in Education’s annual conference in Denver. I like his comment: “I’m not ready to say that project-based learning is ready to take on “personalized learning” as the buzz-term du jour in ed tech, but it’s a closer battle for supremacy than you might think, based on the ISTE agenda.”

Preparing Students for the Gig Economy, Automation, and Uncertainty
Education Week
An important piece by Marc Tucker, highlighting the need to emphasize “experience” more than traditional subject matter – but he’s realistic about the challenges in making this new education system work. To my ears he’s arguing for PBL: “most students would prosper from a learning environment in which they are constantly applying what they are learning to real world problems working in concert with others.”

Project-Based Learning: 7 Ways to Make It Work
Educational Leadership/ASCD
EL’s theme for the June issue is “How to be a change agent” and this article explains how Lincoln High in San Jose, CA is managing the process of implementing PBL schoolwide. After getting successful professional development services from BIE, the school learned lessons about maintaining a vision for PBL and addressing teacher concerns about the change process.

Is it a Project or an Activity? Project-Based Learning and its Cousins
Getting Smart
Tom Vander Ark and Bonnie Lathram provide a useful framework for variations on PBL. They offer seven dimensions to consider on a continuum, such as whether outcomes are defined up front or open-ended, or the degree to which a project is teacher-directed or student-designed, with lots of links to examples of schools that embody each dimension.

Social Justice Projects in the Classroom
Edutopia
Blogger Michael Hernandez advocates for and describes projects that “empower our students to effect change through awareness, advocacy, activism, and aid.”

When Tech Meets Project Based Learning
EdSurge
This article features an interview with our old friend Paul Curtis, Director of Curriculum for the New Tech Network, with insightful comments on the role of tech in PBL. This is followed by a handy list of 14 tech tools showcased at EdSurge’s Tech for Schools Ed Leader Workshop at PBL World in June.

20 Ways to Showcase, Exhibit Student Work
Edu Change & Student Advocacy Blog
Blogger Michael Niehoff, a BIE National Faculty member, offers a great list of ideas for making project work public.

8 People Who are Inspiring What’s Possible in PBL
New Tech Network
Emily Liebtag posted this from our PBL World conference two weeks ago but it’s worth sharing again now: a summary of what each “PBL Talk” speaker presented. Many pearls of PBL wisdom!

 

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