Welcome to the iNACOL Resource Center
KICKSTART PERSONALIZED PROJECT-BASED LEARNING WITH GRADE-LEVEL TEAMS
Friday October 28, 2016
10:00-12:15
Room 303B
The Task
You are a leader in your school, and there are two teachers in the building who have adopted Project Based Learning. Their students are more engaged, they are showing much more initiative in their learning, and they are writing with purpose better than the students in more traditional settings. One of the teachers has also started to use technology to personalize the work in projects, and is seeing even greater strides taken.
You may have never practiced PBL yourself, but the results are so compelling that you want to spread this practice to the other classrooms. You want to create a written plan to present to your (principal, sup’t, etc) that will systematically diffuse Personalized PBL to the rest of the school. You want to make sure that you start with the right people, with the right tools, and the right supports.
What do you need to know before writing up your plan?
What do you need to know? What can you do to answer your questions?
PBL Resources
What makes a project truly great? Every year brings new project adventures with students, and sometimes we really nail it. Some projects are near misses, and others are abject flops.
The New Tech Network Project Quality Checklist can be used as a checklist to assess the quality of your project and whether or not you have everything you need to roll it out to students.
The Building Blocks of Project-Based Learning provides a deep look into what makes a successful PBL implementation in the classroom.
Personalized PBL Resources
I think we need to challenge ourselves to design learning with students rather than simply for them, and PL and PBL are excellent frameworks to help us make that shift.
Let’s start by stating the obvious—there is yet to emerge an accepted definition of “personalized learning”.
While personalized learning is a difficult term to pin down, the energy around the topic is a useful reminder that school in general does not feel well designed to support student growth or to provide deep, transformative learning to all students. Personalized learning is as much a field-wide desire to reimagine how we approach school and learning to maximize individual student potential as it is a coherent design or approach.
Student-produced video about a project at nex+Gen Academy that involved a high degree of personalization, via choice and assessment
For a while now, parts of our nation, and certainly the New Tech Network have been talking about “Quality education for all.” It’s a good idea, but if you want to bring it to the place where the work really occurs, with the student, then we also ought to be talking about Quality Education for Each.
Download the presentation here.
New Tech Network, a national non-profit organization, is a leading design partner for comprehensive school change. We work closely with districts and schools to create innovative learning environments. Through a proven school model, a project-based learning platform, and powerful professional development, we coach schools toward lasting change and ongoing improvement.
There are nearly 200 schools in 28 states and Australia in the New Tech Network. Together, we are creating a nation proud of its public schools. Join us for a tour today.
http://www.newtechnetwork.org/engage/tours