Asking Questions Is Central to Project-Based Learning

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20 slides were projected one at a time for fifteen seconds each. I’ve seen students present under such circumstances, but this was new for me. I recently had an opportunity to deliver such a talk to a large crowd before Sir Ken Robinson took the stage at a Learning Revolution event. Because I was there as a representative of the … Read More

I Don’t Do Projects All the Time

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I don’t do projects all the time. But Project-Based Learning (PBL) has profoundly changed what happens in my classroom even when I am not in the middle of a project. For my first 10 years of teaching, I operated under the illusion that my energetic enthusiasm and sense of humor was engaging all my students. About 20 years ago, I … Read More

Project-Based Learning: A Christian Pedagogy?

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When she saw from my nametag that I was at the conference representing the PBL Residency, she said, “It’s so important that we provide more hands-on learning for some students.” Perhaps, but Project-Based Learning is not “hands-on learning,” at least not essentially. For the last 150 years or so, education was mostly about educating the head. This is a limited … Read More

What is Project-Based Learning?

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When one of my kids came home on a Friday and declared, “I have to finish my project this weekend,”  I was filled with dread. Weekend plans would have to be abandoned so I could try to achieve the impossible: learning the material the project was supposed to demonstrate, balancing my child’s expectations with reality, understanding the standards against which … Read More