Soft Technology

This video seeks to answer the #1 question I get about Project Based Learning, and that is, "Am I Doing This Right?!?" The question speaks to the integrity of my favorite people, educators, and their desire to do the best they can by the students they teach. I hope this video helps you know where to focus your energy when you are trying to shift your teaching practices. Special (and HUGE) thanks to my colleague Kristy Edgar for the amazing animations, graphics, and visuals for this video. She made a simple soundtrack come alive and be entertaining.

Teachers who understand learning intentionally plan for student engagement. They realize it's not something that happens without work, but neither is learning.

This afternoon, a group of adults, admins and teachers, and I met with a group of 5 students to work together to plan our Day of Code event. One of the young men told a story that I feel compelled to share. It really rocked my world. I'll paraphrase for you . . . "I watched a ten minute YouTube tutorial about how to code in HTML; before that, I knew nothing about it. Then, I opened up Notepad and followed the instructions to type in some code in the way I learned from the video. After that, I opened up the text file I made with Safari, and that's when I understood what coding was. Sometimes, you just have to do something before you understand it." And that my friends, rocked my world.

CrowdSchool recently launched an IndieGoGo campaign to help scale its platform for teachers to create, share, and sell project-based Challenges. CrowdSchool seeks to make it easier for teachers to find and use project-based resources in the classroom. All three Co-Founders have teaching experience, and Chief Learning Officer Tim Monreal still teaches middle school Social Studies. Pedagogy is at the heart of CrowdSchool and they are designing a platform that emphasizes 21st century skills like collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. With a successful IndieGoGo campaign, CrowdSchool will launch a marketplace where teachers can search for a variety of project-based Challenges. Teachers will then be able to use a CrowdSchool Challenge online with students in their class. They will crowdsource project-based Challenges from teachers. Once teachers create a Challenge they can decide to share it for free to other teachers or list a price of their choosing. Project-ba...

I've been doing a lot of reading lately in preparation for the first upcoming Engage Me Academy. Here's one thing I learned . . .

Someone asked me recently if [insert organization name here] owned Project Based Learning. Well, I'd like us to think about that together because I understand the root of the question. There are some organizations, sales people, companies, etc. who seem to own the idea of Project Based Learning. Do they? In fact, the tenets of Project Based Learning are ideas good teachers have been using for many years, even if they didn't call it that. One teacher in her 60s recently told me, "Oh Amy, I know all about this! This is how we used to teach before all the testing. It was fun!" Yes, it WAS fun! My friend and mentor Jan Robin was one person who taught me about it. She used it in her elementary school classroom back in the 80s and 90s. She told me that at one time, there was even a state standardized test that attempted to have students create a floating vessel out of some popsicle sticks and foil. My knowledge about PBL has come from many different places, but it began in ...

Today I met with a great group of teachers embarking on implementing project based learning together. I shared this sem inal article with them and we discussed their ideas. But AFTER I left their meeting, what I REALLY wanted to say hit me. As you plan your projects, consider at least one element of project design that will get (and keep) kids interested BEYOND the 8 essentials . . . 1. Serve others in need with your project. Example: Students build a grocery store via donations to fuel the local food bank. In the process, they learn about pricing, inventory control, spreadsheets, and supply and demand. High school students create books about science concepts for elementary school students from poverty with no books in their homes. Each child gets a book. 2. Serve other students by teaching them something they need to know. Example: Everyone is reading this novel in English, but my team is responsible for teaching everyone about theme in this work of literature. If we do a bad job...

I'm working on the idea of a student choice continuum to help explain Project Based Learning. This continuum is not meant to represent "good" verus "bad" instruction; almost all forms of instruction can be done well or poorly, purposefully or not. For example, I learn well by listening, so for me, an interesting, well-delivered lecture could be effective. My son, however, is not much of an auditory learner. Doing a Project would be better for him than a lecture.  I'd appreciate your constructive feedback on this idea. This is version 1. What can we do to make it better?

A couple of smart principals I know (and luckily get to work with frequently) told me that they're going to use Project Based Learning for campus staff development this year. We started brainstorming a Driving Question for this purpose. What do you think? Would you rather have PBL based Back to School staff development? What could we do to improve our DQ? Driving Question: How can you work in a team of 4-5 peers to create a 5-10 minute presentation on an engaging strategy, communication technique, or tool that could be used enhance learning or improve communication in our school? Norms & Expectations: All team members must speak about what they contributed during the presentation . Teaching techniques or scenarios addressed by the teams should be presented in an engaging way and modeled during the presentation. A digital representation or handout that will help your peers remember the technique/tool/idea, etc. must be shared.

Need help getting started writing a Driving Question? Try using the scaffold below; however, don't get locked in! This is just an IDEA for a starting point. Feel free to rearrange, get rid of, and add elements as you please. If you have suggestions to make this graphic better, please let me know if the comments or via the contact form on the right. Want this graphic as a Google Doc so you can edit it? Sure thing. Click here to get it. 

While I've been using Project Based Learning since my second year as a public school teacher some 14 years ago, I have only recently learned the vocabulary to describe the practices I find so effective. Thanks to BIE.org for standardizing and publicizing this terminology. So here's what we do (and don't) say to describe our practices. A big shout out to a certain nearby Project Based Learning elementary school for giving me a few new words and helping refine my understanding of Project Based Learning in the elementary school as well. I would tell you the name of said school, but they are already overrun with visitors. (You can ask me again next school year.) To begin with, Project Based Learning is not a regular noun, it's a gerund, like "caring" or "running." You can't "have" it or "hold" it because it's verb-like. Thus . . . Don't say: This is my PBL.   Instead say, "This is my project." Don't say:  Th...

Yesterday I had  Instructional Rounds  scheduled with a group of teachers involved in a special project . One of the 7th grade teachers I was scheduled to visit had a family emergency and wasn't able to be at school. I decided to go ahead and see what was going on since I already had the time set aside, and I have to tell you . . . It was amazing. The students are engaged in Project Based Learning and were finishing up their "Dream Big" project where they design their dream bedrooms in collaborative teams using Chromebooks. They must know furniture and building costs, calculate dimensions, and keep up with lots of spreadsheets and calculations, as well as use tools like MyDeco.com and Autodesk Homestyler  to create their rooms in 2 and 3D. Everywhere students were discussing projects and solving problems. It was TRULY a WOW! moment. Way to go Mrs. Brenda Schultz and class. We couldn't stop talking about you! Photograph Used with Permission from Andy Carlos Photograp...

Part of transitioning to being the "guide on the side" is helping students become more reliant on each other and themselves than on you (the teacher). The Question Slip is a great option to wean students off your nurturing care and help them become more self and team reliant. Here's how it works, after ALLLL the directions are given, and you have asked many times if there are any more questions, and every hand has gone down, you hand out THE QUESTION SLIP, perhaps two per team. When I first tried this technique, I made a ton of copies and meticulously cut them all apart expecting to use many pages of slips per day. I handed them out, with a bit of trepidation but a lot of hope. Throughout the day, I waited to receive a returned question slip . . . but it almost never happened. In fact, I don't think I ever made another set of copies in my teaching career. However, I heard lots of great conversations, like this one (fictionalized with truthiness): Albert: "Hey, ...

Do you have ideas that should be added to this list or do you notice something that needs to be changed? Please let me know in the comments and you will see the document form of this list change accordingly. Here's the Google Doc version of this file.