Blog Post #11

Questions are everything in the classroom. When opening a new lesson, it's important to have a question ready to ask. This gets the kids motivated on answering that and hopefully they'll pay more attention to your lecture to try to find the solution. Also incorporating new ideas, like showing more videos in class is a great idea. When I was in school, teachers would show a whole class period worth of video and by the middle of it, kids were bored. I think it's important to just show a three or four minute video that ties into your lecture to reiterate your point. Review is also important. A lot of times when I was in school teachers would just dismiss the class. It's a good idea to ask some review questions after the lecture and maybe even a few at the beginning of the next class.
The biggest thing I learned from these videos is that teaching is certainly changing. There's so much more technology being used in class. Kids are working in groups much more. It used to be just a few projects were done in a year as a group. Now it's pretty much every project and even many times everyday work. And kids are loving it. It's exciting and fun for them. It's being used from kindergarten to high school. PBL teaches kids to think independently rather than having a teacher tell them what to learn and then having them repeat it all back. It gets them thinking like they are in the real world already, even at a young age. While some people view this as a bad thing, like they are being pushed to grow up too fast, I see it as good. So many people enter the real world having no idea what it's about. Having them doing projects in school that have them actually exploring reality builds social skills, understanding of the world and prepares them for what they will have to deal with one day. I think it takes education to a new level by giving students a brand new, hands on experience. And being in groups gives them help they may not get otherwise. They'll have help forming the project and have peer editing so few to no mistakes are made.
Basically, project based learning is taking over in schools and we don't need to run from it. We need to embrace it. It teaches kids skills they will need later in life, forms bonds they may not have made otherwise, get's them excited about what they are learning, has them using technology, I could go on and on. The great possibilities are bountiful and still growing!