Friday, April 26, 2013

This week's topics of project based learning and inquiry learning led to a great deal of reflection. I agree that the real world component of education is critical in getting students to "buy in" to their own educational process.

My journalism class is project based learning at its best.  I start out the year front loading the students with the information they will need to be successful.  As we continue, students are separated into groups of their choosing.  Students become reporters, bloggers, or photographers.  The work load of creating an online publication is split among the group and students are constantly working with real time demands and deadlines. All of their final products are available to a world wide audience.

Each student group is led by an editor.  Students make their own decisions about what they will be working on, when deadlines will be set, what needs improved etc.  Students are also held accountable for their contributions to the team just like on a sports team.  If a team member is not contributing discussions will take place and eventually students can be removed from the staff.

I want to continue to move forward with these models of learning and adapt more content to be inquiry and project based.  The two novels I teach lend themselves to this.  I also do a great deal of inquiry based education in my diversity in literature class.  Students are constantly investigating what interests them about certain cultures like Native American tribes or marriage customs etc.

Using my wiki space as my delivery method and organizational method seems to be working for now.  I do think as I progress this method will need some enhancement.

Below are two resources I came across that I liked.  The first is a prezi that investigated the current trends in journalism as a career and the second is a graphic that represented project based learning.


http://prezi.com/kwwtjhqe_tyo/project-based-learning-launch-video/

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