Suzy Cox-Brown Bag

This presentation was fantastic! I love the idea of Project Based Learning. I think this idea of building a project to learn something is so much better, in a lot of cases, than having students come up with a project after learning. It encourages student participation and collaboration, not to mention creativity! To me, in a way, this type of learning is Backwards design. The teacher looks at what essential understandings they want their students to take from the "research" and then lets students choose what they want to do. I think using a Project Based Learning concept that you can differentiate for readiness, process, and product. As the teacher you can decide on the essential understandings, then give the students choices on what they want to do for the project, all the while tailoring to student readiness. Meaning, having different types of projects for your lower, middle, and higher level students. With your lower students you could start with having them do simple digital stories and then students that are higher you could introduce them to more complex things like Google Maps Migrations, Blogs & Wikis. Just because a student is a little lower does not mean they can't handle technology, who knows, maybe using the technology will help them. The process can be different for all of your students depending on their "choice" but because you have established the essential understandings, the product will be the same because they are all learning the same thing, but coming about that learning in all sorts of different ways. I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Cox present on this because she has given me so many resources to use in a classroom to get the students more engaged in their learning. I am so excited to get into a classroom and start using some of this stuff!