Thomas Edison was one of the great inventors of the past century, bringing us recorded sound, moving pictures, electric lighting, and the research and development lab. He must have been very well educated. Actually, as a child he lasted all of three months in elementary school. He wrote, “I used to feel that the teachers did not sympathize with me and that my father thought I was stupid.”
Fortunately, Edison was taken out of school and taught at home by his literate mother. Even more fortunate was that his mother allowed him to set up a lab in the basement and begin to perform experiments while he was still a child. Edison is one in the line of many great innovators who did not, as Mark Twain wrote, let their schooling get in the way of their education.
Current author, Tony Wagner, argues in his book, The Global Achievement Gap, that the basic skills of reading, writing, and math are not enough in our crowded, competitive world. We need also the twenty-first century skills of knowing how to think creatively and to communicate effectively. The three R’s have transformed into the 4 C’s: communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. These are skills that can be taught by giving children situations in school where they must use them to do well. Project-based learning is a proven way to keep students engaged by giving them real-world work and encouraging them to collaborate.
At Ohlone we give spelling tests and worksheets. We have regular math quizzes and tasks. PBL is not the only thing we do. It is not the answer to every issue in education. I take issue with those educators who find something that works for them and then assume it will work for all students in all schools. This is, in fact, the tragedy of America’s national education policy, no child left behind.
Most adult jobs are designed to either create a product or deliver a service. Successful work situations usually involve teams working on common goals according to roles that connect work with talent.
Projects require long-term planning and commitment. Each day’s work is logically or at least necessarily connected to what came before. Students learn that complex tasks usually have sequential steps or stages. They begin to understand that there will be periods of intense activity and periods of leisure or mulling over or standing back and asking if things are really going where you want them to go.
Projects require both creative and strategic thinking. It is always possible that during a project a student will come up with ideas no one has thought of before and change the project in a positive and unexpected way.
Projects are iterative in nature . They require multiple tries to “get it right.” Again, the legendary story of Edison trying hundreds of materials to find the right filament for the light bulb led him to say, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. “ “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
Skills and information are taught and learned as needed. There is a clear reason for mastering something. There is timely application of the skills being taught.
There is always a presentation element. You have to show your work to someone else to see if it has value beyond the classroom. Often the audience is not just loving parents and teachers; it can be experts in the field who will give honest feedback to students about the quality of their work. This year my 13-year-old daughter did an entrepreneurial project where she, with her team, designed, produced, marketed and sold a real product. The culmination of the project was to present their product to a panel of Silicon Valley investors who decided whether, or not, they would fund each project based on the power point presentation these young women made to an audience of several hundred people. Projects promote genuine student engagement since they get to work together, make something, and present it to a larger audience.
There is no right way to do project-based learning. It can be suited to fit the students you have and the interests you hold in common. It can be responsive to real world events. However, I found a checklist that helps define what project-based learning can be. http://www.bie.org/images/uploads/useful_stuff/Essential_Elements.pdf
Tips from my experience (so is limited to what I have done over twenty years.) You can only do a limited number of projects in a year. One is fine for getting started. Two or three is typical in a year. You can easily shift from a text-based lesson to project-based lessons even in the same school day. It would also be conceivable to do the entire year as project-based. You could start with designing your own classroom. Performances are a great way to learn the project-based approach. There are many similarities between theatre and project-based learning. Both are team-based; both require a long-term commitment; both have an external audience over which the students have no control. Field trips are a prime source of projects. The habitat dioramas mentioned in the article began with an overnight to a local national seashore, Point Reyes. We spent four days hiking in the natural environment and learning about the local habitats and ecology. Material covered included food chains/webs/pyramids; producer/consumer niches; geology; earthquakes; native plants and uses by native peoples; endangered species; creek study; lighthouses and Fresnel optics; astronomy. And, of course, the goal of the entire trip was to build community by living and eating together: parents, teacher, and students together. Many activities were group challenges designed to allow students to develop a collaborative group identity by facing a common task where cooperation was the only way to ensure success. When we returned to school each student chose a native California animal and plants that we could have seen at Point Reyes. Students researched their animals and plants with the goal of becoming an expert. They created papier-mache models, made a life-size habitat, explanatory posters, and finally invited other classrooms in for docent-led tours. (Attachment: Creating a Community of Learners) Sometimes let students choose their own project. Every student may have a different topic and form of presentation of learning. I have seen model rain forests, poetry books, long stories, a replica of the Washington monument, art portfolios, math posters (surface area of a cylinder), simulations (stock market), web searches for the Gold Rush, etc.
Teacher benefits You can teach from your passion and your strongest knowledge base, or at least study along with the kids about a subject in which you and they have interest. You are investing energy in bursts, rather than doing the same type of thing each day. There will be times when you and the students are so focused that your sense of accomplishment grows each day. You have something the kids have made, often constructed, to show to parents and administrators who want to see evidence of academic and collaborative growth. I’m sure each of you can imagine how such work would be attractive to each of your own classrooms.
Why do we teach? What is our goal for children? As much as we push and prod and direct, our goal for the children we teach is to help them build their own lives, find meaningful work, and have satisfying relationships and families. How can school be structured to help this happen? One model is to see students as raw material that needs to be shaped into a product. The school is a factory. Students need to go through a series of ordered processes that fit them with skills, knowledge, and a vision of service to the society that creates the schools. This is the goal of a standardized education. Everyone has the same set of basic skills and the same core of knowledge. When we are making cars, or bricks, or drugs, or other such consumer products, we want a standard of quality. We want each product that comes out of the factory to be the same. Perhaps for some types of human work, this is a worthy goal. However, I think most of us would agree that the value of people is not standardization but diversity. If the factory is an apt metaphor for standardization, the garden is a good metaphor for diversity. Some plants need lots of sun; others permanent shade. Some plants thrive in a swamp; others will die with too much water. Some plants mix well with companions and some need their own individual space. What is inside the seed needs to be nurtured according to its nature to mature. The same, I think, is true of children. As adults we do not all have the same information, skills, or jobs. We have specialized according to our talents, interests, and opportunities. In fact, we have forgotten most of the information we worked so hard to master in elementary school so many years ago. Yes, we want everyone to be able to read and think analytically. Yes, we want everyone to be able to manage their money and pay their taxes. Yes, we want everyone to know how to practice hygiene and keep themselves and their families healthy. But the economy needs creators, not clones. It is part of our task to lead students to find ways to connect their natural abilities and interests to the real work of the marketplace. This is the promise of project-based learning.
Why do we teach? What is our goal for children? As much as we push and prod and direct, our goal for the children we teach is to help them build their own lives, find meaningful work, and have satisfying relationships and families. How can school be structured to help this happen? One model is to see students as raw material that needs to be shaped into a product. The school is a factory. Students need to go through a series of ordered processes that fit them with skills, knowledge, and a vision of service to the society that creates the schools. This is the goal of a standardized education. Everyone has the same set of basic skills and the same core of knowledge. When we are making cars, or bricks, or drugs, or other such consumer products, we want a standard of quality. We want each product that comes out of the factory to be the same. Perhaps for some types of human work, this is a worthy goal. However, I think most of us would agree that the value of people is not standardization but diversity. If the factory is an apt metaphor for standardization, the garden is a good metaphor for diversity. Some plants need lots of sun; others permanent shade. Some plants thrive in a swamp; others will die with too much water. Some plants mix well with companions and some need their own individual space. What is inside the seed needs to be nurtured according to its nature to mature. The same, I think, is true of children. As adults we do not all have the same information, skills, or jobs. We have specialized according to our talents, interests, and opportunities. In fact, we have forgotten most of the information we worked so hard to master in elementary school so many years ago. Yes, we want everyone to be able to read and think analytically. Yes, we want everyone to be able to manage their money and pay their taxes. Yes, we want everyone to know how to practice hygiene and keep themselves and their families healthy. But the economy needs creators, not clones. It is part of our task to lead students to find ways to connect their natural abilities and interests to the real work of the marketplace. This is the promise of project-based learning.
As Deng Xiao Ping proclaimed so many years ago, “it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” While his reference was to economic ideology, what he said applies as readily to education. Project-based learning is a powerful way to keep students engaged while making curriculum relevant both to the students and to their future place in society.
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