The end of the path for DT and PBL?
[NOTE: This post is pointed at the secondary classroom. It may not apply to elementary classrooms for various reasons.] I have been involved in an ongoing Twitter DM conversation around design thinking (DT) with my #dtk12chat friends. Unfortunately “design thinking” has become one of those buzz words that education wants to see in their curriculum […]
PBL Teachers are Like Magicians
[Originally Written for BIE.org in 2016. Updated here.] If you have ever listened to me talking at edcamps, sxswedu, or in a facilitated pbl training, then you have heard me say “we need to be more like magicians.” One of the key elements of PBL is the idea of Sustained Inquiry. Sustaining inquiry, as a […]
How I am Learning About PBL For Young Students (Part 1 – Research, Research, Research)
When I started down this PBL path, I was a veteran teacher with over 10 years of traditional teaching experience. Now I am at the end of my teaching career and I am on a quest to better understand how to use pbl with young students. As a new pbl teacher, I learned from the […]
Welcome to My New Website
Today I moved up in the world from Google’s Blogger platform to WordPress. I plan on keeping posts rolling along now that I’ve gotten all fancy. I migrated all of my posts over from Blogger to this platform, so all of that history is still available. In the existing posts, from Edutechmusings.com, you will find […]
5 Things to Jumpstart PBL in the New Year [Math Version]
@amyshamblen You’ve enjoyed the holidays and you have a few more days until school starts back up so you’ve been catching up on your reading. Several of your friends have gone to trainings during 2018 where they have learned about Project Based Learning and you are intrigued. But everything you have read gives you […]
The Learning Process Must Include Inquiry
http://bit.ly/2pPDPQh Today I worked with a teacher planning a unit and I realized that the idea that we need to kick start the inquiry process on Day 1 of a unit isn’t obvious to every teacher. The following post wrote itself as I walked her through the process of making inquiry the foundation of all […]
Design Thinking or PBL, A Chicken/Egg Scenario? My journey.
http://www.science20.com/gerhard_adam/chicken_and_egg_problem_view_evolution-107927 Last night I missed a great conversation during a Twitter chat hosted by #MeritKCI and involving my friends who frequent the #dtk12chat. As I was scrolling through the tweets from the chat I noticed some discussion of PBL and how different Design Thinking (DT) is from PBL. A blog post that was referenced (and […]
Using An Old Challenge to Teach Project Management
http://goo.gl/AK0vs When I talk with teachers about getting started with PBL I often tell them to think of something they have seen done before and take the idea and make it their own. But I also caution them to think of their content first – what are the verbs and nouns in their standards? Unless […]
I Go From Project Idea to Project Launch (PBL with a DT Feel)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/ I’ve just completed a pretty darn nice 2 weeks off for the holidays. Tomorrow I head back to 2 days of PD before the students come back to me on Wednesday. I’ve been spending the last couple of hours fine tuning my first design project of the year. This is my first year of […]
Building Empathy Through Interviews
www.floridamemory.com/items/show/32039 7th graders are all over the map when it comes to emotions. So, on one level, you might think that it isn’t hard to get them to develop empathy. But how many of your students, at any grade level, have conducted interviews to gain knowledge of their interviewee? My first semester at Meridian school […]