PBLresources

=Project-Based Learning Resources:=

Edutopia's [|Project-based Learning Page]
Edutopia is a resource of the George Lucas Education Foundation with some of the best resources related to topics that positive impact education, including Project-based Learning, Technology Integration, and Assessment. Edutopia may not be a book, but it belongs in every teacher's professional library!
 * [|Project-based Learning Instructional Module]
 * [|The Big List on Project Based Learning]

Creating knowledge, not just retelling it.
"The New Plagiarism: Seven Antidotes to Prevent Highway Robbery in an Electronic Age" by Jamie MacKenzie. http://www.questioning.org/Q4/cov98may.html

California's [|Project-based Learning with Multimedia Site]
Packed with great resources for teachers and lots of example of student projects.
 * [|Curriculum Activities & Technical Help]

[|Taking It Gobal]

 * [|TIG ed]

Skowhegan (ME) Area Middle School's [|Technology Resource Page]
An awesome collection of resources for teachers doing projects with technology

The [|Educational Video Center] (EVC)
An alternative school in NYC, using documentary making as the vehicle for their curriculum

[|Maine Memory Network]
Gets Maine's students working with local historical societies to electronically archive their primary resources. Allows students to handle and become familiar with documents about their area, learn to be archivists, and then be able to access the resources electronically in the future.

[|PBL-online]
Welcome to PBL-Online, a site designed to help you understand the philosophy of standards-focused project based learning, learn a systematic, proven method for planning and implementing rigorous projects in schools, or to use the project library to collaborate and share projects.

The Buck Institute for Education [|Project-based Learning Handbook]
The BIE Project Based Learning Handbook The Handbook is designed to guide, support and coach middle and high school teachers as they conceive, plan, and conduct projects. It explains each phase of a successful, standards-focused project, from devising a project idea to reflecting on the outcomes of a project.

Examples of Student Projects

 * From [|California]
 * From [|Skowhegan] (ME)
 * [|State of Maine from a Kid's Point of View]

Teacher Resources, including Guide Sheets

 * From [|Skowhegan] (ME)
 * Mike's [|PowerPoint Help Sheets]
 * From [|California]
 * [|Youth Powered Video] - from EVC

[|New Skills for a New Century]
Project-based learning teaches kids the collaborative and critical thinking abilities they'll need to compete.

[|Start with the Pyramid]
Ask Seymour Papert, renowned expert on children and computing, why students are turned off by school, and he quickly offers an example: "We teach numbers, then algebra, then calculus, then physics. Wrong!" exclaims the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician and pioneer in Artificial Intelligence. "Start with engineering, and from that abstract out physics, and from that abstract out ideas of calculus, and eventually separate off pure mathematics. So much better to have the first-grade kid or kindergarten kid doing engineering and leave it to the older ones to do pure mathematics than to do it the other way around."

[|An Incredible Journey]
The scene is familiar: Teachers are sitting around a large table. The principal calls everyone to attention, and the meeting begins. During the next three hours, there will be plenty of discussion and debate -- typical features of every staff meeting. But this meeting, is anything but typical. Today, the staff will be challenged to change how they think about teaching. They'll be asked to say good-bye to the long-held practice of working solely within their departments with familiar colleagues (English teachers with English teachers, math teachers with math teachers, and so on) in favor of interdisciplinary projects and activities. They'll be asked to rethink their time-tested curricula in favor of a new way of teaching and learning that takes students outside of the classroom and into the world beyond.

Edutopia's Spiral Notebook: [|Does Project-Based Learning Lead to Higher Student Achievement?]
The Edutopia Web site regularly publishes examples of innovative teachers who use project-based learning (PBL). Every PBL proponent says it’s a better way to teach and learn. Teachers and students say they wouldn’t go back to the old way of doing things. So, why aren’t more people doing it? What I most often hear is that there isn’t time because students need to be taught so much material for high-stakes tests.