Blog Post #9

In Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning, John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller give seven thing that a good project needs. Out of the list, I found the most important was Student Voice and Choice. Students learn better when they are interested in what they are learning about. If the students don't care about that particular subject they aren't going to be as engaged. Another one that I found important was A Publicly Presented Product. Students seem to put more into the project when they have to present it publicly. No one want to be the group with the least put together project. 

The video Project Based Learning for Teachers did a great job of explaining what project based learning is. I used this video in my presentation of project learning and enjoyed watching it again. Project based learning is centered around a driving question. To answer this question, the student must research and share their finding.

In Andrew Miller's blog post Project Based Learning and Physical Education, he talks about the Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning. He bases is blog post off of the information that Larmer and Mergendoller give and applies it to Physical Education. He follows the same key points and gives an example of Project Based Learning in Physical Education.

In the post Ten Sites Supporting Digital Classroom Callaboration In Project Based Learning, we are introduced to websites that can help enhance project based learning. One site listed that we have used before is Google Docs. This site is used to help students work together even if they can not be in the same room. It allows them to share documents and presentations within their group and put in everyone's input. Another site that I found interesting was Lino. It is a way for you to share what you are writing on your SMARTboard with your students and they can add on as long as you provide the URL. I think this could be a great tool for students who can not come to school. If a student is absent because of being sick then they can pull up the URL and still see what is going on in class and also participate.

I found Two students solve the case of the watery ketchup by designing a new cap very interesting! Two students try to come up with a different bottle cap to stop the water inthe ketchup bottle from coming out.  It's so cool that they legit researched what had already been tried and came up with something new.