SBISD EdTech Blog

Pictures from IMSA’s 2 week Coaching Institute where we are learning how to coach groups of middle and high school aged students towards their own solution to a PBL problem. Today’s session focused primarily on the context and content of the problem that will be presented to these students in next weeks “Summer Sleuths” program.

Please click on thumbnail to open image. {As an aside, the software I used to create this image has nothing to do with PBL, per se. Comic Life is a much loved piece of software for the MAC that is currently in beta for the PC. Hopefully, its full version will be released soon. As you can see, it has a lot potential for student created graphic novels as well as alternative ways to present information.}

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The most important thing I learned on the first day of this four-day IMSA Design Institute is that the facilitator (teacher) is key to the success of implementing a meaningful PBL experience in the classroom. PBL is really about moving students to take ownership of their learning which for the teacher means moving from a didactic approach to teaching into a more facilitative role. With teachers being held accountable for high stakes test scores, PBL will not be an easy sell to any teacher. Traditional teaching covers the tested items while PBL adds depth to the curriculum giving students opportunities to exercise and develop the 21st century skills needed to be successfull in their future careers. Let’s face it, employers will not be giving them the right answer, telling them how many pages should be in their report, giving them step by step instructions to solving a problem–they will expect their employees to use their own skills to generate solutions and address job responsibilities–literacy skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, synthesizing skills, evaluating and creating skills, etc.

PBL experiences require role changes for the teacher and the student. Are we ready for this change?

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…but that’s a good thing.

I should state that this if my first NECC experience and I am in absolute awe. What an amazing conference. From the beginning, I’ve felt the surge of energy and excitement, along with a vast depth of richness when it comes to the people here. I’ve been to other EdTech conferences, and I’ve usually come away feeling like I didn’t really get very much out of it. Here, I can’t seem to take enough of it in. There have been more than a few times that I’ve wanted to be able to clone myself and be in more than one place at a time. Read More »

Wow! What a wonderful, energetic, and contagious young man. The movie did not do him justice.

Thanks to Promethean, I had the opportunity to eat lunch with and hear Ron Clark talk, dance, and energize a small crowd as he told his story of becoming an educator. Like many of us in education, his career started quite by accident, but once there, he knew in his heart the classroom was where he belonged. Read More »

I just left a morning workshop out at The Lovett School in Cobb County called eScrapbooking: Where Virtual and Natural Worlds Meet. The two presenters were Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson of eduscapes.com. This was a very high energy and information-filled three hours of how to create and use e-scrapbooking in many parts of the curriculum. Read More »