About+Project-Based+Learning

=PBL= 21st-century Strategy for Inclusive Education=

===="Cognitive scientists have advanced our understanding of how we learn, how we develop expertise, and how we begin to think at a higher level. Fields ranging from neuroscience to social psychology have contributed to our understanding of what conditions create the best environment for learning. Culture, context, and the social nature of learning all have a role in shaping the learner's experience. __//These insights help to explain the appeal of PBL for engaging diverse learners.//__" (retrieved from Edutopia, June 2013)====
 * ====In K-12 classrooms, project-based learning has become as a method of instruction focused on rigorous, relevant, hands-on learning.====
 * ====Relevant and meaningful across any core curriculum area.====
 * ====Involves active, student-directed learning.====
 * ====Projects are open-ended and give students choice when it comes to demonstrating what they learn.====
 * ====Demanding of teachers - facilitator rather than expert.====
 * ==== Projects require planning and management skills. ====

=Diversity and Special Learning Considerations=

===="Project based learning is an excellent way to differentiate instruction in a full inclusion classroom, especially when that class includes students of widely different abilities, from the cognitively or developmental disabled to the gifted children. Project based learning is also excellent in resource rooms or self contained classrooms with either typically developing partners or with sufficient support or accommodations." Retrieved from About.com-Special Education, June 2013====

===="If one is teaching math, you can talk all day about it and look at problems on the board; however, students begin to understand math when they work on problems. Problems are a necessary part of math, and we shouldn't shy away from using that word." "If a math teacher wants to have her students underachieve, then she will work out all the problems for her students. Doing problems for the students may result in neat, tidy papers, but it also results in a missed learning opportunity."====

===="In order to understand collaboration, both face-to-face and global, students must also work on the problems they are having with one another. We must begin to view the interpersonal struggles between students not as problems in the sense of something to eliminate but rather as a potential teaching scenario. Having a real-life problem to coach students through will help them understand the skills they need to survive and thrive in the real world of collaborative online and off-line spaces."====

==== "Likewise, teachers often get caught up in the emotion of students' interpersonal conflicts when, in reality, we should learn to coach students through these problems. Working out problems for the students may result in neat, tidy classrooms, but it also results in a missed learning opportunity." ====

===="Businesses ubiquitously request people skills, and now they're looking for online, collaborative project-management skills as well. This is not something that will happen tomorrow; it's going on today. Students can be the greatest textbooks for one another, but this kind of learning requires a change in how we, the teachers, view problems."====



=Free Implementation Resources=

====To help you start using PBL, we've created age-appropriate, customizable project checklists for written reports, multimedia projects, oral presentations, and science projects. The use of these checklists keeps students on track and allows them to take responsibility for their own learning through peer- and self-evaluation.====