Project Based Learning Playlist: Week of June 1st

Your weekly guide to the world of project based and creative learning.

Add your own best reads and bits of information as a note or response. Let’s learn from each other and inspire greatness.

PBL Playlist: What we are reading

• Our School-Wide Project: We ran with it! -“Waterloo Discover Academy began brainstorming ideas for a schoolwide project that would improve our school in 2013. Students created a list of projects that included recycling (compost, trash to treasure), gardening (plants, flowers & pond), school banner, workd showcase and running track…”
• Twenty Ideas for Engaging Projects -“By starting with engaging projects, you’ll grab their interest while establishing a solid foundation of important skills, such as knowing how to conduct research, engage experts, and collaborate with peers…”
• Project-based Learning on the Rise Under the Common Core -“As part of their efforts to help students meet the Common Core State Standards, adopted in 43 states including California, teachers in Santa Ana and elsewhere throughout California are increasingly turning to the strategy of “project-based learning” as exemplified in Siebert’s raft-building exercise…”
• 5 Pieces of Advice for Project-Based Learning -“A time where students sit independently, listen to long lectures, read lessons from a textbook, and cram for tests just to forget the information the following week is no more…”
• The Domino Effect, Part 2 -“Last month I wrote a post about my findings of project based learning from my research in the classroom as part of my master’s studies. Part two consists of my evaluation of PBL’s impact in my classroom and its potential for my own and others’ practice…”
• Why “Content Coverage” is Over: A Manifesto! -“But at the same time, we don’t have to admit to defeat by these forces. In fact, maybe we aren’t as rigidly committed to covering all this content as we think we are…”

New On Our Blog: What we are writing

• The Opposite of ‘The Secret File Folder’ — 10 Ideas for Authentic Audience in Education -“Providing an authentic audience can be a game changer, but it can also be overwhelming. Truth be told, it is much, much easier to resort to the ‘secret file folder’…”
• 5 Reasons The Future of Education is Project Based -“But why, you might ask, would we abandon our emphasis on the rote, fact-based model of school that we’ve relied on for over 200 years?…”

Create project based lessons with CrowdSchool. Sign up for private beta.