Project Based Learning & iPad Integration

Project Based Learning Resources, Examples About ETR Community EdTechReview (ETR) is a community of and for everyone involved in education technology to connect and collaborate both online and offline to discover, learn, utilize and share about the best ways technology can improve learning, teaching, and leading in the 21st century. EdTechReview spreads awareness on education technology and its role in 21st century education through best research and practices of using technology in education, and by facilitating events, training, professional development, and consultation in its adoption and implementation.

Projects As of July 1, 2013 ThinkQuest has been discontinued. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of the ThinkQuest global community: Students - For your limitless creativity and innovation, which inspires us all. Teachers - For your passion in guiding students on their quest. Blogs as Showcase Portfolios I am a huge advocate of blogs as ongoing, reflective portfolios of student work. After using them with students for the last six years in a variety of formats in three different schools, in my opinion, they are the perfect container for sharing, organizing and reflecting on student learning. For starters, they are so amazingly easy to use. I’ve used blogs with students as young as third grade and it really only takes one lesson for them to understand the basics.

QR Coded Student Videos: Classifying Activity This is part of my continuing series of blogs about how I am integrating mobile learning into my undergraduate course on interpersonal relations. There are a dozen students in the class. Ten of them are in the 17 to 21 year old age range. The other two are over 35 years old. All of them own mobile devices – four of them being Smart Devices (iPhone, Android). Why Your Project Needs a Verb Designing project-based learning (PBL) assignments opens up several decisions. The challenge that students will face, the assessments that measure their learning, the amount of voice and choice to offer, the calendar and length of the challenge—these are just some of the many facets of an effective PBL project. As we design a project, we may have trouble really focusing it.

Recommended Resources: Mobile Learning, Digital Activism, Multitasking Professor of urban planning, Amy Hillier, recently spoke at TEDxPhilly to talk about how data visualization technology can map a city’s emotions and memories. Geographic Information System (G.I.S.) technology has become more commonplace and allows statistics to be easily mapped, but in this article, "Mobile Technology: Mapping a City's Emotions, Memories," Hillier argues that we can go one step further. By using data visualization to map the city that isn’t visible to the eye (i.e. sewage system, water pipes, and other underlying infrastructure), it can be used as an experiential tool. She gives an example of two children living in different neighborhoods whose experiences can be quantified by mapping where they eat, where they go for entertainment, and average household income.

Why English teachers should care about project-based learning: multiliteracies, assessment for learning and digital technologies. There is impetus for pedagogical change in the English classroom. Bull and Anstey (2010, p.6) observed that, ‘literacy teaching and learning should respond to the rapid changes in literacy arising from increasing globalization, technology and social diversity.’ This transforming social, cultural and technological landscape necessarily brings with it a new set of opportunities and challenges for secondary English teachers.

Talking About Text Structure in the PBL Classroom Project-based learning is often associated with STEM learning, but PBL is a powerful context for literacy learning as well. Many research-supported practices for developing literacy can be seamlessly embedded into projects. A meaningful and engaging context, as in PBL, can make instruction in research-supported practices even more effective (Guthrie et al., 2004; Guthrie et al., 2008). Strong readers pay more attention than weaker readers to how texts are structured or organized. Fortunately, paying more attention to text structure is something that we can teach to all readers. Research shows that this practice helps many readers, even young children and those with learning difficulties (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Shanahan et al., 2010).

Seeing the Classroom as a Hub of Technology-enabled Social Change Antero Garcia, who teaches English at a high school in South Central Los Angeles, is a PhD candidate, focusing on critical literacies and civic identity through the use of mobile media and game play. He utilizes his classroom as a center of youth participatory action research. His students assess and address real-life needs in their South Central community. Garcia is on the conference committee for the 2012 Digital Media & Learning Conference in San Francisco, Calif: “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World.” Garcia is heading up one of four important sub-themes in the conference, “innovations for public education.” A strong advocate for youth and teachers in public education settings, he is also one of the featured bloggers at DMLcentral, where he consistently pushes the digital media and learning community to be innovative, yes, but also relevant and meaningful.

Teachers Easy Guide to The Most Important Web Tools in Education When it comes to using web resources with our students, time plays a decisive role.It is next to impossible for a busy teacher restricted by curriculum constraints, day to day lesson preparations, assignment corrections, to mention but a few of his chores, to effectively search the web and find the adequate resources to share with his/ her students. Most people just do not have the time to learn all these technologies and some educators pick just one or two websites of interest and start exploring them. This is definitely not the right thing to do particularly if you want to leverage the huge potential of technology into your classroom.There is, however, a simple roudabout to this problem. Look for educational technology blogs ( such as the one you are reading now ) and subscribe to their feeds to stay updated about the latest web tools to use in your instruction.

Creating Books on the iPad Book Creator for iPad: $7.49The simple way to create your own beautiful iBooks, right on the iPad. Read them in iBooks, send them to your friends, or submit them to the iBookstore. Ideal for children’s picture books, photo books, art books, cook books, manuals, textbooks, and the list goes on. eBook Creator: $4.49 Scaffolding the PBL Shift I remember my first year teaching freshmen Global Studies at a brand new Project Based Learning school. I was so excited to allow students to pursue their own paths in student centered learning. I gave them open-ended topics like imperialism to pursue with little guidelines and no rubrics. I thought the students could research and figure out what interested them and what was important all on their own. Fairly soon the students started coming to me and begging for guidance, and it wasn’t limited to struggling students. The most vocal students were the ones who had gotten all A’s in traditional classes.

PBL: Project, Passion, Play Based Learning Effective and progressive educators understand and attempt to implement PBL strategies and practices within their learning settings. What is PBL? Project-Based Learning? Passion-Based Learning? Play-Based Learning?