- "personal and social responsibility
- planning, critical thinking, reasoning, and creativity
- strong communication skills, both for interpersonal and presentation needs
- cross-cultural understanding
- visualizing and decision making
- knowing how and when to use technology and choosing the most appropriate tool for the task"
Students are acquiring and heightening their skills and the understanding of content to a level of being able to apply it in unique ways. The practice of this application process is called project-based learning. In conversation about project-based learning, Edutopia provided several instances of school classroom projects learning environments. Each classroom has similarities in the teaching style, working style of students, the subject in which the projects were based on, and the overall learning outcome. Edutopia's project-based learning examples can be seen at the following websites,
In each of these examples, the viewer will see that the teachers did not necessary lecture and teach all of this content. Instead, the teachers took the role of a facilitator of knowledge, resource, and most importantly a guide to the outcome. This allowed the classroom to become student centered and not teacher centered. The expectation of the students is to actively engaged in progressive towards the investigation, recording, creating, and presenting of their findings. It is up to the students to dive deeper into the content and learning from one another. The content the students were working with was authentic, carried real world meaning, and relevant to each of the student' lives. The relevance got the students interested in learning and collaborating with on another.
The entire learning process that was displayed between the different situations resulted in a higher order of thinking with the content than the students would have normally got with typical education. The passive role of the teacher and mixed with the students active role to work hands-on allowed the students to not only apply the content in unique ways, but also solve problems that occurred within the activity.
References:
Curtis, D. (2001). More Fun Than a Barrel of … Worms?! Edutopia. Retrieved fromhttp://www.edutopia.org/more-fun-barrel-worms
Curtis, D. (2002). March of the Monarchs: Students Follow the Butterflies’ Migration. Edutopia.Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/march-monarchs
Edutopia (2007). Why Is Project-Based Learning Important? Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-guide-importance
