Podcast Reflection #12: Learning in Hand: Project Based Learning

Learning in Hand
Project based learning (PBL) is a very important in a classroom. Students answer an essential/driving question that is unique to them so the teacher receives a large variety of answers. This shows the different types of thinking of the individual's in the classroom. Besides creating a great question for students to answer it is important to include parameters for the project. This means having the students include specific information without influencing the answer they will produce. It is a way to get the students to delve deeper into the subject area and cover the standards that need to be covered while the students are still exploring and, hopefully, enjoying the subject manner. I really liked the idea of creating a pre-rubric for the students, but then presenting it in front of the class and having the students help add areas and help decide on the amount of points each area is worth. This is great, because as the podcast said, it allows students to take more responsibility for the project. It also helps the students understand the goals of the project. Another beneficial rubric method was having the students review each others work before the teacher actually receives it. This allows for a good review and room to improve before the teacher actually gets their hands on it. Using this project based learning style on iPods and iPads is a great idea because of all the free apps students are allowed to us and that are extremely helpful in creating the project. Creating word webs, taking notes, taking pictures, and recording sound are all capabilities that these new devices have that would have only been able to use on computers before. It allows for the students' projects to travel along with them and when they get that brilliant idea they can record it right away. As a pre-service science teacher I have heard many great benefits of project based learning and have a feeling I will love using PBL in my classroom. Projects are a very important part of the science curriculum and really help students to understand the material in depth instead of a brief overview that students receive from worksheets. It also allows them to enjoy the subject matter so I will be an advocate of PBL in my future classroom.