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Tips Tuesday: Getting Started with Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Charmagne Campbell-Patton

July 3rd 2012

Last week, I had the chance to attend  the Asia Society’s 5th annual Partnership for Global Learning Conference in New York City along with fellow WS Program Managers, Carissa & Laura, as well as our new National Program Director, Amy Westby. This is one of the few conferences dedicated specifically to global education, and it was great to be there surrounded by so many like-minded organizations working to close the global competency gap in K-12 education.

While at the conference, I attended several workshops to learn about what is happening in the field. One of the workshops featured a school in Winton Woods Ohio that has embedded wall-to-wall project-based learning as a strategy for building their students’ global competence. Every day at the Academy of Global Studies at Winton Woods High School, students learn core content through a global lens by engaging in project-based learning. The school’s principal, Dr. Terri Holden, shared some of the successes and challenges of  becoming a global academy through the use of project-based learning in a presentation at the conference. Much of what they discussed sounded a lot like the process World Savvy teachers go through when starting the World Savvy Challenge program for the first year. They talked about how for the first few months, it felt like their first year of teaching again. Using project-based learning really pushed them beyond their comfort zones and required them to step back and give up a little bit of control in order to allow their students to go through the learning process in a more authentic way.

If you’re thinking of embedding more project-based learning into your classes this summer or fall, or even if you’re not teaching but are interested in learning more about PBL and its benefits to students, check out these great resources on PBL:

PBLU: http://www.pblu.org/

Buck Institute Tools: http://www.bie.org/tools/freebies

Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning

Video Global PBL 101: http://www.globaleducationconference.com/video/global-pbl-101

PBL Online: http://pbl-online.org/