Shopgirl Teaches It!

PBL - A Day in the Life - Un Día en la Vida

This is a project I found at ilearn.org. It's for anyone who has ever wondered what life is like in other parts of the world. Students can share descriptions and cross-cultural comparisons of their daily life as well as special times with their family and learn about the daily life of others. This might include accounts of holidays or celebrations, vacations, memorable occasions such as a birthdays, or other experiences that become a part of our lives. I can see my students contributing to this project with enthusiasm and motivation to learn about others.

This project from ilearn.org is complemented with a digital photo section in which the students share captioned autobiographical photographs on topics such as:

• Mealtime at Home (What does a typical meal look like at home?)
• Getting to/from School (How do you get to school each day?)
• Interesting Places in My Community
• An Exciting or Important Event, My Daily Routine, Clothing
• Autobiographic Profile
• Other ideas you would choose to include

Students would accompany each digital photograph with a short written explanation of what is depicted in the photograph and its significance.

Web 2.0 Tool JYGY - Mobile Social Networking

JYGY allows you to create your own mobile texting micro apps like polls, chatrooms, rss to your phone and much more from the web or from your 2.0 interface or from your smart phone. Available on Facebook as well.



Students or teachers can set up a JYGY Group to connect with classmates, update your status right from your mobile phone and it will automatically update your friends with a text message.

Learning to Use Intelligences

Project Based Learning Websites

In researching PBL, I'm finding some useful links:


The Global School Net website is a clearinghouse for collaborative projects from all over the world. GSN's Projects Registry allows users to browse new projects and add/edit your own project announcement. You can select projects associated with defining criteria (subject area), technology tool (video/audio/blogs live conferencing etc.) or tools for collaboration. Once you submit your search, you will be given an list of active projects sorted by start date. A search for (language/audio, video, blog/electronic publishing) produced 18 hits of engaging projects that could easily be adapted for classroom use. Many of the projects were closed to registration, but they proved to be worthwhile projects that would suit the needs of a PBL activity for students.





This site categorizes language arts links into the sections of Reading/Viewing and Writing/ Speaking. The Reading/Writing resources are further divided into subsections genres, Reading Fundamentals, Text Comprehension and Visual Media Skills. The organization of these components makes the search for PBL projects much more intuitive and efficient. The projects are more readily found and the learning activities and assessments of the projects I viewed were on target with the standards one could use when considering a PBL project.

What is Project Based Learning?

I was hoping to get my text early this week but was unsuccessful.

While researching the topic, I did find an interesting link which discusses some notable characteristics of Project-Based Learning from the ISTE website. Cincinnati bridge study.

The mentioned above illustrates many of the characteristics of project-based learning activities:

Students have some choice of topic as well as the nature and extent of content of the project. Students have some input into the nature of the project.

The teacher acts as a facilitator, designing activities and providing resources while the students collect and analyze the information, make discoveries, and report their results.

Students conduct research using multiple sources of information, such as books, online databases, videotapes, personal interviews (in-person or conducted via telecommunications), and their own experiments.

The project usually involves interdisciplinary study across the curriculum. Students are expected to draw upon a broad range of knowledge and skills, and to "stretch" their knowledge and skills.

The project involves the design and development of a product, presentation, or performance that can be used or viewed by others. Students may simply present the results of their projects in class as reports or posters. Other projects may extend beyond the school boundaries in the form of multimedia publication.

A team of people may work on the project. The team may be an entire class, several classes, or even several remote sites.

The instruction and facilitation is guided by a broad range of teaching goals, and students may achieve additional (unforeseen) goals as they explore complex topics from a variety of perspectives.

Project Based Learning focuses on a problem to be solved or a task to be accomplished. The single most important ideas in solving problems and accomplishing tasks is that you build on your previous work and the work of others. (prior knowledge)

Educators use tools to extend students' mental capabilities (such as computers, libraries, the Web - Mindtools), tools to extend your physical capabilities ( airplane, automobile, microscope, telescope, telephone), and formal and informal education system (base of triangle).