Well, I have written my first two entries on how I believe that PBL is truly a teaching method that will allow teachers to teach to all different “levels” and learning styles. I also believe that PBL goes a long way towards assisting in the development of those highly sought after critical thinking and problem solving skills that educators strive to develop within their students. Now I want to connect PBL and the Ford PAS approach to teaching and learning, to today’s teachings. This in my opinion brings up the “technology and education” discussion.
I am very fortunate that the Ford PAS class that I will be teaching will not only take place in a computer lab, but I also plan on providing each student with a handheld computer (PDA) for their use for at least a portion of the class. I strongly feel that using these technologies with the Ford PAS materials will vastly enhance the students’ learning experiences.
Since I am computer technology teacher and (and as mentioned earlier, use a great deal of PBL), I am now in the midst of looking at the connection between technology and education not just in my area, but throughout all the academic disciplines. It seems to me that there is a very wide disparity between those who utilize and teach technology and those educators who have not yet embraced technology in their teaching and learning methods and styles. Which leads me to the questions 1) Does technology have a place in the educational process? 2) To what extent should technology be used to best prepare our students for future challenges? In my opinion, these are not easy questions to answer. The use of technology in education strongly depends on so many different factors such as staff training, consistent support, and the very obvious one – funding.
But when thinking of all the advances in society that technology has played a large role in, such as the medical and business fields, I cannot help but believe that it can also be possible for technology to have the same type of tremendously positive effect on education. I also was present when a very interesting question was asked that I would like to throw out to you. Should technology drive the curriculum or should the curriculum drive the technology? My first reaction was that there was a need for both, but I would be very interested to hear some of your thoughts on just where technology fits in to the educational process.
I greatly appreciate the opportunity to write this blog. Thanks to those at Ford PAS for this honor. Please feel free to e-mail me throughout the year if you have any further thoughts or would just like to “chat” about Ford PAS, the world of education, technology and education.
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.
I’ve spent the last couple weeks writing about why I think project-based learning is an effective and good way of educating students. Students who have the opportunity to choose what they learn are often more interested and excited, and motivation is a crucial component in determining a student’s success. They take ownership of their own education and learn material on a deeper, more thorough level. So why is there still so much resistance to project-based learning?
Many years ago, a good friend of mine was in her first year at Harvard Medical School and one of her classes was a project based learning class. Real medical cases were presented one week, topics were split up, and the expectation was that each group member would research their topic during the week and understand the material well enough to teach it to the rest of the group the following week. Theoretically, if each person did the necessary research, they could come together and have learned enough to understand and solve the case. She simultaneously loved and hated this class. The topics she researched were deeply learned and would remain with her much longer than her other lecture-based classes. She also loved being able to automatically see the connection between the information she was studying and the applications. But her major complaint was that it was too much work! The pressure of finding the appropriate information in a sea of seemingly unending amounts of facts and figures and deciphering it well enough to teach others in the span of a few days was a constant stress on top of her other classes.
I think her struggle pretty well exemplifies some peoples’ resistance to project based learning. Lecture based classes are definitely going to cover more information and often people question whether the time required for project based learning is worthwhile. We have a finite amount of time with our students so what is the best use of that time? It’s the common debate between Depth vs. Breadth and Covering vs. Uncovering information. And certainly I wouldn’t want to go to my primary care doctor and find out she has a great understanding of how the heart works but not the lungs or liver. Is it different for high school students? What do you think the balance is? Is one more important than the other at different stages of learning?
The business department at the college where we teach the Introduction to Business class using Modules 2 and 7, has set objectives that need to be addressed in order for the students to receive “Business 1010: Introduction to Business” credit. The way that we dealt with it was finding a balance between keeping the core of our class the project of writing their own business plan, while supplementing it with additional reading and writing so the college would find our course acceptable and our students would be ready for Business 1020. We feel like the activities surrounding the larger project allow the students to get a deeper understanding of the concepts. They now not only read about what Market Research is and how important it is, they actually engaged in their own Market Research and learned first hand how to do it and how necessary it is. The way that we’re able to incorporate all of it is that our class runs 30-60 min longer than other Busn 1010 classes at the college. But our students understand that they are high school students taking a college class and they’re willing to put in the extra class time.
Are there other ways you’ve struggled with finding the balance between the different ways of educating students? Please feel free to share your struggles and successes!
As a teacher, there are many difficulties we come across as our students engage in project-based learning. One thing that I often encounter is the difficulty of challenging students to go deeper into their projects when each individual project is so unique.
There are common business principles that all the students need to consider for their business that we go over as a class. Oftentimes we will pick one student’s business to use as an example so the concepts we are discussing are concrete. If we are talking about Promotions and Advertising for the first time, we might pick one student’s business, a hip hop recording studio for example, and together go through what questions to ask and what research needs to be done. What do existing recording studios do to advertise? What could they do better? What type of advertising really influences them personally? What is a realistic expectation for their business during the first year? Can they really afford to have a TV commercial during primetime? This often works well for the first level.
But how do you get the kids to individually go deeper? For me, there are two things that have really helped. The first is having small classes. That way meeting with each student is possible. But this isn’t always an option. And even when it is, it doesn’t always work well. The second thing that makes a huge difference is when students are paired with a mentor, someone in the community who preferably has some background in their particular type of business. These mentors not only help students go deeper, they also help students think realistically.
One business concept that students are often resistant to is the idea of starting small by finding a niche and being the best at it. One student wanted to open a restaurant that catered to everyone in every situation. She wanted to offer an array of different types of food (American, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Mexican) and have different dining areas to accommodate everything from formal dining to casual, family-style dining. I repeatedly spoke to her about the benefits of starting small, but she refused to budge. I tried different lines of reasoning to dissuade her. “It’ll take a fortune to start a business like that!” “Is it really possible to have quality, authentic food when offering so many options?” “I personally would never order Chinese food from even a pan-Asian place because they’re never any good!” And on and on. Nothing. But, one word from her mentor, a restaurant owner, and she changed her plan. It was great to see, but still slightly insulting. =) She had the opportunity to spend time at the restaurant and see what it really takes to run one well. And the business plan that she was working on became much more than just an assignment.
Are there other things you’ve done to support your students in their project-based learning that has worked well? Please feel free to share!!
Last Friday, I was listening to NPR and the topic of discussion was, “What makes a great public high school.” I only caught a fraction of the show, but during those 5-10 minutes, they said that Newsweek’s latest “Top 100 High Schools” study shows that small, more personalized, project-based learning seems to be most effective. Afterwards, I thought about it more and reflected on my experience teaching small, project-based classes using the Ford PAS modules.
One of the classes I teach is Introduction to Business using Modules 2 and 7. The entire semester is one big project, culminating with each student presenting their business plan to a panel of their peers, high school and college staff and local business members. Like all other classes, the beginning of the semester is filled with enthusiasm and optimism. Students are excited with the idea of learning how to start their own business and they expect the process to be enthralling and captivating at all times. This lasts about… two weeks. Possibly a month. And then reality sets in. It’s a lot of hard work. At that point, many things can make a difference. If they’re self-motivated or if the overhanging grade motivates them, they’ll likely get the work done. If they have a parent or teacher who keeps them accountable, that always helps. But what I’ve observed truly makes a difference for my students is how real the project is for them, in other words, how likely are they to actually get the business running and start making money now. Immediate gratification, nothing beats it as a motivator!
A few semesters back, I had a stellar student who was interested in sustainable, organic and local farming. Her business idea was to start an organic café, and she did an excellent job completing assignments. Then, someone suggested to her that she could start smaller by having a stand at a local weekly farmer’s market that summer and the whole plan took on a life of its own. Once the idea became real, there was a lot more work that the assignments didn’t cover- finding out health regulations and certificate requirements, contacting city officials in charge of events, actually contacting local farms, etc.- but there was a real end goal that made it worthwhile for her.
I think a great thing about project work is that oftentimes, it requires/allows students to initiate and therefore take responsibility for their learning. I think one thing that many students struggle with when taking classes is they don’t buy into the assumption that the knowledge that they gain now is going to be necessary/beneficial for their future. (I struggled with that a lot when I was teaching Physics and Chemistry. It’s really hard convincing a student that knowing the difference between an Arrhenius and Bronsted-Lowry acid will be of importance later in life…) But if there is a concrete goal, and learning new skills and information could help them achieve that goal, then more often then not, they hop on board.
But even with project work, sometimes it can still be just an assignment to the students. What are some things that you’ve found really get students excited about getting their work done-especially the difficult, time-consuming parts that are just plain hard work?
Last Friday, I was listening to NPR and the topic of discussion was, “What makes a great public high school.” I only caught a fraction of the show, but during those 5-10 minutes, they said that Newsweek’s latest “Top 100 High Schools” study shows that small, more personalized, project-based learning seems to be most effective. Afterwards, I thought about it more and reflected on my experience teaching small, project-based classes using the Ford PAS modules.
One of the classes I teach is Introduction to Business using Modules 2 and 7. The entire semester is one big project, culminating with each student presenting their business plan to a panel of their peers, high school and college staff and local business members. Like all other classes, the beginning of the semester is filled with enthusiasm and optimism. Students are excited with the idea of learning how to start their own business and they expect the process to be enthralling and captivating at all times. This lasts about… two weeks. Possibly a month. And then reality sets in. It’s a lot of hard work. At that point, many things can make a difference. If they’re self-motivated or if the overhanging grade motivates them, they’ll likely get the work done. If they have a parent or teacher who keeps them accountable, that always helps. But what I’ve observed truly makes a difference for my students is how real the project is for them, in other words, how likely are they to actually get the business running and start making money now. Immediate gratification, nothing beats it as a motivator!
A few semesters back, I had a stellar student who was interested in sustainable, organic and local farming. Her business idea was to start an organic café, and she did an excellent job completing assignments. Then, someone suggested to her that she could start smaller by having a stand at a local weekly farmer’s market that summer and the whole plan took on a life of its own. Once the idea became real, there was a lot more work that the assignments didn’t cover- finding out health regulations and certificate requirements, contacting city officials in charge of events, actually contacting local farms, etc.- but there was a real end goal that made it worthwhile for her.
I think a great thing about project work is that oftentimes, it requires/allows students to initiate and therefore take responsibility for their learning. I think one thing that many students struggle with when taking classes is they don’t buy into the assumption that the knowledge that they gain now is going to be necessary/beneficial for their future. (I struggled with that a lot when I was teaching Physics and Chemistry. It’s really hard convincing a student that knowing the difference between an Arrhenius and Bronsted-Lowry acid will be of importance later in life…) But if there is a concrete goal, and learning new skills and information could help them achieve that goal, then more often then not, they hop on board.
But even with project work, sometimes it can still be just an assignment to the students. What are some things that you’ve found really get students excited about getting their work done-especially the difficult, time-consuming parts that are just plain hard work?