Hello again. Before I start, I would like to thank Anne and Sheila for responding and offering some great points for me (as well as others) to think about. I will try and spark more of an “interest” with this entry and will stress again that I would love to hear some more comments and opinions from some of you fine Ford PAS educators from around the country. I really do enjoy hearing about how others from different disciplines as well as different geographical areas approach teaching and learning.
My last entry had to do with Project Based Learning and why it isn’t used more as the student gets higher and higher into his/her educational journey. With this entry, I want to look to whether or not PBL does a good job of teaching to “all levels” of students. I have often observed or heard many people inside and outside of education claiming that certain teaching methods do a good job of teaching to either those students who are strong academically, or those students that struggle academically, or some methods just plain “teach to the middle’. I believe that PBL shines as a teaching method for all students.
Just by going through Module 1 (which is a module that I will be using in my teaching), I can see many examples of where students from all academic levels can achieve some sort of success, while still challenging themselves. In my opinion, effective teaching is all about sparking some sort of interest within the student. By using many of the traditional teaching methods, there is very little room to allow students to think creatively and critically. If you give students the opportunity to do this, usually they will become much more involved in their work and the learning process as a whole. I understand the need for traditional methods of teaching to a certain extent. All students need the basic foundations and the basic skills that will allow them to become critical thinkers and problem solvers. I believe that students will develop and expand those same basic skills and the ones sought by employers through the Ford PAS PBL assignments.
To wrap up this week’s entry, let me go in this direction, especially since I teach in a Suburban Detroit middle school, where we often hear of what types of skills students should be acquiring in school. I have had countless conversations with area employers who are asking – no, begging – for students to develop their problem-solving and critical thinking skills. No longer is it good enough just for these students to be able to identify problems: they need to be able to offer viable solutions as well. This is why I feel that PBL offers students the opportunities to acquire, practice and develop higher order thinking skills.
Your task then, is to help me come up with arguments to support the idea that Ford PAS and PBL in general also offers enough support for students to develop the basic, foundation-type skills that are assessed in most testing situations. If it’s not, then what do we as teachers need to do to enhance PBL activities?
I have now had time to truly reflect on my experience at the Ford PAS Professional Development Institute, which took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan this past summer. To begin, I would like to say what a great experience it was and it was a pleasure meeting so many outstanding professionals who are passionate about providing quality experiences for students. After this experience, I have been looking forward to getting back to school and the classroom to see exactly how I could put my newfound knowledge into “practice.” It is one thing to talk about what should be done or about the different “theories” in education; but I am sure as most of you know, it is a totally different ballgame when those theories are put to the test in front of actual students in a classroom setting.
Since I am a middle school teacher, and I teach computer classes; I try and take a “project-based” approach to teaching and learning. Who would want to sit there and listen to me lecture about how to use Excel for two weeks and then perform exercises from workbook or textbook? In my opinion, it isn’t Middle School students. I have found over the years that project-based learning suits both my teaching style and the different learning styles of my students. For example, in my classroom, I will introduce a software application such as Excel or PowerPoint by modeling its many uses. Then I will give the student a “real-world” type project that allows them to discover and utilize, for themselves, the many features of that software application. One such project is a stock market simulation where the student must research five stocks on the Internet, chart them on various Excel spreadsheets and create a PowerPoint presentation based on this information.
In my opinion, projects like this keep students involved; it keeps them on-task. It allows them to take “ownership” of their learning, and ultimately offers the opportunity for a greater sense of accomplishment and furthers the probability that what they learn will stay with them long after they have left my classroom. With regards to project-based learning, I think the Ford PAS curriculum goes a long way towards meeting both my needs as a teacher and the needs of my students.
Here is where I see a dilemma. It seems to me that this wonderful concept of “project-based” learning is used a great deal throughout the early years of education. It also seems that it is one of the latest and greatest teaching methods that is being taught to our up and coming educators. But why does it seem that the further that students get into their educational process, the less and less project-based learning is used? Does that seem true to the rest of you? Why is that? With all the technology and resources available to us these days, wouldn’t it make more sense that as we get later on in the educational process, these resources would be utilized more often in a project-based manner? I would appreciate hearing others’ thoughts concerning this matter.