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Blog Posts for Project-Based Learning

Insightful articles about 21st century skills, inquiry, project-based learning, media literacy, and education reform.

Helping Students Be Awesome

Submitted by King on Thu, 2013-12-19 13:00

My friend Oliver Schinkten knows 150 awesome human beings. They’re students in his Communities and leadership classrooms at Oshkosh North High School, and they routinely do amazing things.

Last year, each student in Communities found and interviewed a local veteran of World War II, the Vietnam War, or the Korean War. They prepared questions, conducted and recorded hour-long interviews, edited them into stories, and created keepsake DVDs for the veterans and their families. The students then planned and ran an event celebrating the service of these people and presenting them with the DVDs. Afterward, many families contacted Oliver to tell them how moving and powerful the experience was, and how the DVD was a priceless heirloom they would pass down for generations.

Pretty awesome stuff for high schoolers.

Or how about the hydroponics lab that the students are building? It isn’t just a 48-foot long hoop house that will raise fish and fresh vegetables around the year to be used in the cafeteria and sold locally. It’s also a STEM Learning Center, creating a living lab for students from Oshkosh North and offering educational tours to school groups from around the area.

And it’s being funded, designed, built, and staffed by high school students.

People often assume that Oliver is teaching a gifted class, but he has public-school students from all different backgrounds, with a variety of historic levels of achievement. He says that the difference is authenticity. When students realize that what they are doing matters and is real, they engage, and the results speak for themselves.

During the 2012 election campaign, the Communities classroom created a non-partisan Web site that factually reported on the many issues in that divisive campaign. Read more

Crowdsourcing in Your Classroom

Submitted by Smith on Fri, 2012-03-23 12:51

How can you shift your classroom away from lecture and toward inquiry? You can get help from the modern phenomenon known as crowdsourcing—the practice of putting many minds to work on a single problem. Inquiry is, in effect, crowdsourcing in your classroom.

What Crowdsourcing Concepts Can Help Me?

The following four concepts from crowdsourcing can help you use more inquiry in your classroom.

Brain Network

  1. Distributed Computing. While the term crowdsourcing is relatively new, the idea has been around for a while. One early example is the University of Berkley’s SETI project (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), started in 1999, with over three million people devoting time on their personal computers to process radio signals. Other projects put crowds of human brains to work on even thornier problems. Just last September, over the course of three weeks, Fold.It gamers decoded an AIDS protein that scientists had been struggling with for 15 years. And inspired by the success of Fold.It, EyeWire.org recently launched a project asking people to help color-code neurons in the human retina.

    Classroom Application

    • A starting point for distributed computing in your classroom is to have students create their own unit overviews. Here’s how. Instead of lecturing to introduce a new unit, assign partners or groups to find out about specific topics in the unit. For example, to introduce a unit on the Civil War, you could list topics such as battles, generals, causes, public opinion, economics, technology, media, casualties, and so on. Then ask partners or groups to select a topic to investigate. Take the class to the library or media center for a half-hour inquiry into their topics. Afterward, have each group report briefly on what they discovered. This distributed-computing approach engages students and fosters research, collaboration, and presentation skills. It also covers the high points of the topic through crowdsourcing instead of lecture.
    • A next step is to have students help develop the tools for assessing their work. Ask students what they want to accomplish—what excellent work would look like. Involve them in creating a rubric. This brainstorming process works even for young students, as is shown in this video about a bridge-building class. By involving students in creating the tools for their assessment, you get buy-in from them and often end up with a more rigorous assessment tool than you would otherwise have.
    • When you and your students gain real comfort with distributed computing, you might have them participate in planning the semester’s syllabus. Have them brainstorm what makes a successful learning experience. Present the core standards on which they’ll be tested, and ask for project ideas to reach those goals. Gather student suggestions on the board and then guide a discussion analyzing how to implement them. By enlisting students in this part of their education, you show that they are responsible for their own learning. You also teach them the metacognitive skills they need to be lifelong learners.
    2. Read more

10 Reasons to Try Project-Based Learning

Submitted by King on Tue, 2012-02-28 15:54
10 Reasons to Try Project Based Learning

You may have never tried project-based learning, or you may teach in a purely PBL environment. Whatever your background, you’ll find that PBL can be a powerful instructional approach. Here are ten reasons why.


  1. Adult life is project based. Most tasks that adults complete are projects, from simple duties like doing laundry and baking cookies to major endeavors like finding a job or renovating a home. Adults rarely listen to lectures, take notes, and pass tests. Instead, they take on projects. Project-based learning helps students learn content while they practice the skills they need as adults. For a great explanation of this connection, watch this video from the Buck Institute for Education.
  2. Projects prepare students for future work. Any project that can be done the same way over and over with consistent results will soon be outsourced, automated, or digitized. Any project that requires nonlinear thinking, decision making, and problem solving requires a human being. It’s a job—the best kind of job for the future. Watch Thomas Friedman's remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, in which he covers these points from minutes 18:00-34:10.
  3. Projects teach content and 21st century skills. The only way students can learn to collaborate is to collaborate on something. Yes, collaboration can be messy, but that’s all the more reason students need to learn to deal with the messiness. Projects require students to develop the 21st century skills that they need, such as thinking critically and creatively, communicating and collaborating, and consuming and producing information.
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5 Hit Shows Featuring Inquiry and Project-Based Learning

Submitted by King on Thu, 2011-10-20 16:10

If you or your students are new to inquiry and project-based learning—or if you just need some popular-culture inspiration for your program—you should check out the following hit TV shows. Each one uses the inquiry process to create amazing projects:

  1. Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel is a classic show that investigates modern myths and viral videos, using science to determine whether they are confirmed, plausible, or “busted.” (Let’s face it, the more formal term—burst—doesn’t work as well as busted.) In every episode, Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage, and their cohorts test myths using the inquiry process. Each show starts with a myth that the team wants to examine.
    • Questioning: The team asks the key questions about the myth. What are its parts? How can we test each part? What are the potential hazards of our testing? How can we use the materials that we have? How can we ensure great TV from picking apart this myth?
    • Planning: The next step often involves sketching ideas, creating scale models, rapid prototyping, and benchmarking. At this point, the team is considering how they can confirm or deny the myth.
    • Researching: When the crew needs to find out more, they search online and even travel off-line to places like NASA or bomb ranges to get the necessary information.
    • Creating: The team gathers the materials and tools they need and builds an experiment for finally testing the myth. They use all sorts of motors, computers, high-speed cameras—and not a little duct tape.
    • Improving: Rarely do things go right the first time, so the team must reevaluate what they are doing. They make adjustments, adding, removing, rearranging, and reworking parts.
    • Presenting: At long last, the team runs the final, definitive test to determine if a myth is true or not—often with surprising results. Recently, Jamie and Adam tried to make a Newton’s cradle out of wrecking balls. That’s radical science!
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