Blog Post #9

r Strange proposed to question, "What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning?"

I believe that teachers and students can teach us a lot about project based learning. I believe that project based learning is a great tool to use in a classroom to get the students really engaged in their learning experience. Dr. Strange gave us a few resources to use to research this. Below I will summarize and talk about each one.

The first article is called Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning . This article gives great examples of things you can really use to enforce project based learning in the classroom. Things like what you need to know about project based learning. This article said that "Teachers can powerfully activate students need to know content by launching a project with an entry event that engages interest and initiates questioning". I believe that when teachers do not have an entry event to announce a project, it may seem unimportant or like busywork to the student. To get the students involved and interested in a project you really need to make it seem fun and interesting to them before they get started on the project.

The next source is a video by Tony Vincent. It is called Project Based Learning for Students. This video shares many great things about project based learning. It shows many ways of using it in that classroom and it also explains how it is helpful to students. This video really breaks it down for someone who may not know much about project based learning. Once I have my own class, I will definitely incorporate project based learning into my teaching.

The next article I used was Project Based Learning in P.E.. This is a great example students using project based learning in their high school P.E. class. This teacher really engaged his students in their learning experience. He got his students to create their own physical fitness programs. After creating them, they got to share them with the middle school students. They really got to go beyond the classroom with their project. I really think that this is really impacting the students. They are learning but also sharing it with others.

I also used the video of Two Students Solve the Case of the Watery Ketchup By Designing A New Cap . This video was so inspiring! These two young men used project based learning to create an awesome new product that could possibly be sold in stores. They really did great research. This video is a great example of students teaching others about their research. Students really can teach us a lot about project based learning, I just think that they have to be really interested in what they are researching or working on.

The last video was my favorite one. It was What Motivates Students? I fell in love with this video. It was just a video of students saying what their teacher did to help them get motivated. A lot of great things were said in this video. Things like rewards for doing a great job. This really showed me that a little encouragement from the teacher went a long way with the students. If the teacher is excited about it, chances are the students are going to be excited about it as well.

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