Using Technology with Authentic Learning in the

Project Based Learning (PBL)

By Jennifer GarrisonEd 5700 TwTDr. Smirnova

Project-based learning, (PBL) is the use of classroom projects, where students use technology and inquiry to engage with issues and questions that are relevant to their lives. These classroom projects are used to assess student's subject matter competence compared to traditional testing.

What is Project Based Learning (PBL)

Real-world problems capture students' interest, as the studentsacquire and apply new knowledge in a problem-solving context.

The teacher plays the role of facilitator, working with students to frame worthwhile questions, structuring meaningful tasks, coaching both knowledgedevelopment and social skills, and carefully assessing what students have learned from the experience.

The Core Idea

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Characteristics of PBL

Is organized around an open-ended Driving Question or Challenge.

Creates a need to know essential content and skills.

Requires inquiry to learn and/or create something new.

Requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication.

Allows some degree of student voice and choice.

Incorporates feedback and revision.

Results in a publicly presented product or performance.

When students use technology as a tool to communicate with others, they take on an active role.

Instructor’s role in Project Based Learning is that of a facilitator.

The Instructor must structure the proposed question/issue so as to direct the student's learning toward content-based materials.

Student role is to ask questions, build knowledge, and determine a real-world solution to the issue/question presented.

Students must collaborate expanding their active listening skills and requiring them to engage in intelligent focused communication.

Roles

Outcomes More important than

learning science, students need to learn to work in a community, thereby taking on social responsibilities.

Although students do work in groups, they also become more independent because they are receiving little instruction from the teacher.

Project Based Learning has been almost exclusively implemented in poor communities. In other words, the poor are experimented on like they are lab rats.

Attempts to implement PBL in wealthy school districts have failed primarily because the wealthy understand that traditional teaching methods.

PBL has created a disaster in mathematics, the reason being that mathematics is primarily skill based at the elementary level.

Criticism

Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A.

(1991).Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning.Educational Psychologist,26 (3 & 4), 369-398.

Bransford, J. D., Sherwood, R. S., Vye, N. J., & Rieser, J. (1986). Teaching thinking and problem solving: Research foundations.American Psychol ogist, 41, 1078-1089.

Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42.

Buck Institute for Education, . (2010). Project Based Learning for the 21st Century. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.bie.org/

Duschl, R. A., & Gitomer, D. H. (1991). Epistemological perspectives on conceptual change: Implications for educational practice. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28, 839-858.

Edutopia, . (2010). Project Based Learning. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning

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