By :Laura Hamilton
Edutopia is a website published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF). Founded in 1991 by filmmaker George Lucas and venture capitalist Steve Arnold, the Foundation "celebrates and encourages innovation" in K-12 schools. Edutopia is a place where students and parents, teachers and administrators, policy makers and the people they serve are all empowered to change education for the better; a place where schools provide rigorous project-based learning, social-emotional learning, and access to new technology. Where we can develop 21st-century skills, especially three fundamental skills: how to find information; how to assess the quality of information; how to creatively and effectively use information to accomplish a goals.
I think what many people forget is that Physical Education is not a gym where it is the teachers job to get kids into great shape. That is not possible with the amount of time they see students. They are teaching students how to be physically active for a lifetime; introducing students to a variety of activities that they can do once they are out of school. While we want to be active in our classes and get them up and moving and we do a variety of cardio activities, it is also important to teach the other aspects of physical activity such as recreational activities that may turn students on to being active adults. We also teach current trends in technology so students have the tools needed to stay active in their world. We are teaching for the future not just for today!
PBL
First let’s talk about what
PBL is? Project Based Learning! In Project Based Learning (PBL), students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. Rigorous projects help students learn key academic content and practice 21st Century Skills; such as collaboration, communication & critical thinking.
Within the PBL website they offer services, including a Workshop.
PBL Workshop.
Here they offer a Workshop Menu including:
Three-day PBL 101 workshop- This onsite workshop engages participants in learning the principles for designing, assessing and managing standards-focused projects as well as using performance assessments to judge the relevant work generated by 21st Century learners. Through a combination of direct instruction, video analysis and hands-on collaborative work, participants have the opportunity to plan, design and receive peer feedback on an engaging and rigorous project using the Buck Institute for Education model and tools. Every participant (no more than 35 in any one session) receives a free copy of our PBL 101 Workbook, which includes rubrics, planning forms, activities, readings, etc.
One-day PBL Instructional Coaching follow-ups- We conduct onsite instructional coaching visits as a required element of our sustained support. The content and process of these sessions are based on the needs of the participating teachers. The follow-ups could include additional training, classroom observation, teacher coaching, curriculum review, or a review of student work. We require a minimum of two in the school year following the PBL 101 workshop.
One-day PBL 201- Advanced Practices workshops.These onsite workshops are designed as follow-ups for educators who have taken our PBL 101 workshop and had an opportunity to implement their project. The topics range from PBL and Web 2.0, PBL and RtI, PBL and Differentiated Instruction, PBL and Special Needs Students, etc.
One-day PBL For Leaders workshops- These onsite workshops are designed to provide educational leaders with a toolkit of ideas and best practices that will enable them to create a teaching and learning environment that allows PBL to flourish in their school. Our National Faculty members who currently work as principals in PBL schools facilitate these sessions.
PBL Workshop can even be used in the physical educational field as well. Physical education can be a place where relevant and authentic learning can occur. I think project-based learning (PBL) is one way to not only create this, but to also show others how valuable PE can be. When done well, PBL gives students a relevant and authentic task that they, as a team and as individuals, must explore and solve. Instead of a project that is a curriculum or completed at the end, the standards-based instruction is filtered through this authentic task, which creates a need to know in students. They see why they are learning what they are learning. The students learn and complete the project concurrently, continually revising and producing a product that they will present publicly.
YouTube/education
YouTube came out with a program with schools that will redirect all YouTube links to educational content onYouTube.com/education. In addition, comments will be disabled and related videos will only be educational, both of which are a source of anxiety around exposing kids to inappropriate content. Each school and district has a different kind of filtering system, but this allows schools that block YouTube at the domain level to access it through YouTube.com/education. Educational videos can be very interactive for kids in learning. Also teaching them to read is key as a parent and teacher. So finding ways to incorporate that in with your technology use is important and very easy to do today in our society.
YouTube/education is a great tool that can even be used in the physical education field. It can not only be available for students to go home and learn more about the lesson that day, teachers can even use it as a tool to teach that lesson of the day.
By: Salvatora Gajewski
TED Talks
TedTalks was started in 1984, as a conference to bring people together from three groups: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It's free and has over fifteen hundred TEDTalks videos with more being added every week.
The conference is held in spring on the West Coast of North America. Lasting four days it is breadth contents include: Science, Business, Art, Technology,and Global issues facing our world. Its has fifty plus speaker each of whom get an eighteen minute slot interspersed with short presentations including music and comedy. There are no breakout groups, everyone gets the same experience because all knowledge is connected.
DiscoveryEd
Discovery Ed is a website/tool than can transform classrooms, empower teachers, and captivate students, by leading them in a way of providing high-quality dynamic digital content to school districts of large and small sizes, rural and suburban areas, and everywhere in between.
They believe that by capturing the minds and imaginations of students you can accelerate student achievements. Tapping into students natural curiosity and desire to learn. Since Discovery Ed has been around it has impacted the way educators teach providing them with with digital content and professional developments. Transforming classroom instructions into an impressive experience that sparks the natural curiosity of the student.
Envision Schools
Their mission is simple. It is to transform the lives of students-especially those who will be the first in their family to attend college-by preparing them for success in college,careers,and life.
They started as a 501(c)(3) charter school management organization in June of 2002. Today they run three small high performing urban public schools in the Bay Area of San Francisco. It integrates a challenging curriculum that requires all students to complete the A-G Common Core coursework ensuring them to be eligible and prepared to attend a four year university.
The educators use project-based assignments that challenge students to use the 21st Century Skills of critical thinking,solving problems resourcefully, and collaborating productively. Which are needed to thrive in college, future careers, and life. Students then have the opportunity to use these skills and show what they know through the use of a portfolio presentation and defenses, similar to a dissertation. These presentations are required to graduate and are invaluable to the preparations of the students life after high school.
Building on the success of the schools they created a consultancy division in 2010. It also works with progressive teachers and leaders throughout the U.S. to create vibrant schools and engage students deeply in their learning.
By: Brian Orr
iCurio
My class has researched iCurio in the past, and reported on it being a magnificent search engine for school age children to use. In this post, I will go into some detail about how I might use it in a Mathematics course to help students learn outside the classroom. The website work quite seamlessly when searching for a topic, reading articles about that concept, and storing those articles in your personalized folders for later reading. I think most children older than 7 or 8 will be able to use the website fluently on their own with little hiccups. In mathematics especially, a student can research a concept that is universal to all people on the globe; what a powerful tool the internet is! Derivatives, basic algebra, quadratic functions, graphs of 3-D shapes, all of these ideas and lessons can be found on iCurio and learned by a student at their own pace. No deadlines, no homework! Students have the freedom to research to their hearts content.
I found a few lessons on Algebra II concepts such synthetic division, logarithmic functions, and simplifying exponents. Each search result brought 5-20 pages of content that would introduce each concept or develop how to use it in various cases. I could assign one of the webpages for my students to use, if they would like, to reinforce material taught in class. Or direct them generally to the iCurio database and let them choose which result they think personally best. In short, iCurio contains a lot of information, and lessons are based on meeting common core standards. Students can learn from home, quite well, and on their own initiative.
Teaching Channel
Teaching channel is a website dedicated to hosting videos that teachers or schools create, to highlight different lessons plans, styles, and common core standards. The site is particularly useful for teachers wanting to improve meeting common core standards with their own lessons, and more so, feed off of a multitude of other teachers for lesson ideas. Each teacher will have some nuance or way to explain a concept different from another. These quirks and even tricks can be helpful to be passed on to other educators around the country. And with common core standards being the basis for about 1/8th of the videos hosted on the website, Teaching Channel becomes a great source to learn how these standards guide and impact a lesson plan.
Common Core Lesson Plans
The final tool I researched were examples of common core standard lesson plans. The examples were of lesson plan sources, such as Inspiration, would provide ideas on how to fulfill common core standards in one's classroom. There also was included a list of standards for certain grade levels and courses like Algebra 1, which detail the expectations of the state on what teachers include in their curriculum. I found it a good source for clearing up what the common core standards are and how one might incorporate their requirements and new style of thinking into some of our lessons. The idea of the common core standards system is great for it provides students with the opportunity to be prepared for nationwide jobs, universities, and styles of work that they could experience or interview to be a part of. The program sets lofty goals which teachers aim to commit to, and this website among others is helping ease the transition to this type of thinking in our education.
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