Connecting Live With Educators
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/ December 15, 2015. That’s the date on this draft post I was thinking about writing. It is the second of my 10 “draft” posts I have on my blog. I’m about to shift this blog over to WordPress and away from Blogger. I have 276 blog posts altogether. Most were written over a 4 […]
Exploring Design Thinking as a PBL Guy
Via Eric White This week I will be meeting with other BIE National Faculty (NF) members at our annual Spring Summit. For the summit we have broken into Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) and I am with the Design Thinking (dt) group. We will be sharing with the other NF and we are looking at how […]
It’s Time For a Project
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/ It’s that time of year again for many (most?) of us in the K-12 world of the United States to deal with standardized testing. And there are many teachers who have been waiting until “that test is over” to start a pbl project. There are some of you who can’t see past the […]
Another Take on Problem Based Learning for Math
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gpforeducation/ I have been wrestling with the marriage of Project Based Learning (PBL) and Math for nearly 8 years now. A few years ago I moved towards Problem Based Learning (PrBL) instead of Project Based for math. It just seemed to make more sense. With PrBL there are shorter time periods to complete a problem […]
What is Essential For Successful PBL?
http://earthmosaic.org/index.html This year the Buck Institute for Education (BIE.org), of which I am on the National Faculty, is re-examining the “Essential Elements” for PBL. As I was thinking about it I remembered that I have posted about these elements a few times, over the years, and I came across this post from July […]
Which Came First PBL or Small Group Instruction?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/smu_cul_digitalcollections/ Ye Olde Chicken-Egg story. Why am I wrestling with this? Because many consider me pretty smart about Project Based Learning(PBL). And, our school which calls itself a PBL school, is pushing small group instruction. So, is PBL just a version of small group instruction? Not sure. And when you infuse a very structured form […]
This Summer Put Something Into Your Sea Bag
http://www.zazzle.com/american_sailor_ww2_poster-228992068234634646 Early on in my 20 year Navy career I got great advice from a veteran sailor. He said to remember to put something into your sea bag whenever you have a unique experience. If that experience was bad, remember how it happened so you won’t repeat it. If that experience was great, remember how […]
Teachers Using PBL Need to Model Critical Elements of the Process
http://www.flickr.com/photos/picturepurrfect685/ There may only be 20 or so regular readers of this blog but because anybody can read it I’ll need to keep this as generic as possible. The reason is because of some trials and tribulations I’ve had this semester with helping teachers reach their full potential. To start with, our school is extremely […]
Am I Really Going To Do An Edcamp Again?
I’m thinking about doing the whole edcamp thing again. There, I said it. After my last foray into running an Edcamp (Edcamp Manor) two years ago, I vowed I’d just attend them and never try putting one on again. I wrote about creating the edcamp in an early blog post. Then, I wrote about my frustrations […]
Keeping the End in Mind
Courtesy http://www.flickr.com/commons/ If you have been trained by the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) or by the New Tech Network (NTN), or by another group that might have been originally trained by BIE or NTN, then you are familiar with the phrase “begin with the end in mind.” You also might have heard this if you […]