Em's Ever Evolving Erudition

Knowledge is not a destination, it's a journey. In this class, we definitely went through a journey. I learned many things that I can put into my professional practice. One really nice thing about this class was that we learned technology tools by exploring some complex ideas like inquiry based learning and project based learning. This way we didn't learn technology in a vacuum. Overall I would say that my time spent in this class is very useful as I have grown new knowledge and developed many lessons I can put to use in my classroom. Some of the projects that we did this semester really stand out to me as they were poignant in my learning and practice. One such project was when I worked with Holly to develop a presentation on Digital Citizenship. This was really good for me in wrapping my mind around this big topic. There are so many different parts to Digital Citizenship that at first I felt so overwhelmed but working with a partner totally made it manageable. I also rea...

We have covered a lot of important concepts in the past couple of weeks: telecommunication, collaboration, assessment, and evaluation. All are integral to creating powerful IBL/PBL projects. Each week has given me food for thought and added tools to my tool belt. I have already started embedding these concepts into my practice. In week 7 we covered telecommunication and collaboration. With today’s advances in technology, students are no longer stuck learning only within the school’s walls. They can now connect to other students around the world or with an expert in a specific field. These connections can be very powerful. Students start to see bigger pictures, see their real world potential, and are more engaged in their learning. There are some great examples of this happening all over the world that we got to explore. I really was blown away when looking at some of the projects on the Google Science Fair webpage. These kids were inspired by real world problems and situation...

The past three weeks have cover a wide range of topics and all important in consideration when planning PBL units. How do spark passion in our students? How do we use our own passions to ignite passion in others? How do we make sure our students have the skills to be a good digital citizen? And how do we do everything while making sure we are using best practice? These are essential questions that will help guide us in our design of effective project based learning lessons. We can create a well designed, planned out project, but if it doesn’t hook the students it can fall short of success. The students have to be engaged. They have to get the “so what?” of the learning. This can be done by thinking about passion. There are two ways to tap into passion. First is to find what your students are passionate about. One of the cool ideas involving student passion is the Genius Hour, where you allow your students to spend 20% of their time exploring a project of their own passion. Imagi...

“Students are most successful when they are taught how to learn as well as what to learn” (Barron and Darling-Hammond 8). Project-based learning and definitely inquiry-based learning is about process and content. We teach the students the skills they will need to be successful to complete the project. By making the learning more student focused in these processes we awaken creativity and passion within both ourselves and our students. By shifting our pedagogy, we empower our students to take responsibility in their education and give them the skills that will be important in their uncertain future. Project-based learning and inquiry based learning can be very powerful in teaching students both skills and content, but it doesn’t just happen. Scaffolding and pre-planning has to happen for students to be successful. This help support the learning of critical thinking skills, self-direction, and teamwork (Savery 8). If teachers take the time to do this very important training on the pr...