Blog Post 9

What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning? 

As a student and a future educator, I found that Project Based Learning can be kind of tricky but great in many ways. PBL gives students a chance to tackle with many complex and open-ended questions, which gives a chance for the students to be creative. Students should not be refrained from in-depth work, which is what Project Based Learning is all about.

In the article Educational Leadership, it states that students must see the PBL activity personally meaningful and with an educational purpose, which will lead to a great project. Their are seven essentials to Project Based Learning, which are:

(1) A Need To Know
    - This first essential to project based learning is when the students are intrigued about what the teacher has brought to their attention. The teacher will come up with a creative way to get the students to want to know about the upcoming project they will work on.
(2) A Driving Question
    - The driving question is the focus point on starting the project and what to research. The question should not be closed ended. Closed-ended questions will lead to the students providing less information for the activity.
(3)Student Voice and Choice
  - This element is key for the students because they should come up with a project that is meaningful to them personally. This helps to keep the students intrigued and more involved with the activity.
(4) 21st Century Skills
  - Students should not be stuck in the old way of learning. This element helps the students to have more diversity in their project. The skills that go towards this are: communication, critical thinking, technology skills, and more.
(5) Inquiry and Innovation
  - In this stage, students come up with new driving questions and they also research more.
(6) Feedback and Revision
  - In this stage, the students look over the rubric that the teacher provided for the project to make sure they have what is needed. The teacher should critique the work and provide any necessary criticism.
(7) A Publicly Presented Product
  - This stage is when the students present their project to an audience that the teacher has provided for them.

The Youtube video, "Project Based Learning for Teachers," provides the viewer with important background information on project based learning. Teachers can meet required standards even with using Project Based Learning. This just gives the students a fun way to learn. PBL also entails those life skills that are needed, such as: communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and much more. It also gives the students an opportunity to work over an extended period time to learn meaningful information. Overall, PBL is beneficial to teachers and students.

The video, "What Motivates Students Today", shows clips of students sharing what motivates them to do better in school. As shown, great criticisms and also punishments help to strive the students on bettering what they lack in. Giving rewards is also another factor that helped the students be motivated. Overall, having a motivator will help students to actually try to achieve their goals.

In the video, Two students solve the case of the watery ketchup by designing a new cap, two seniors from North Liberty High School came up with ways to stop watery ketchup. The students brainstormed and drafted out many ideas to fix their problem. The two didn't limit themselves, they even went as far into drafting images on a software that was provided from their class. It took the students a year to come up with the project but they kept focused. The idea in the end actually worked.

Project Based Learning should be taught everywhere. It gives students to expand their ideas, creativity, and also knowledge. Nevertheless, it gives them those essentials towards life skills.