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<h4>I think that the challenge for the educators and coaches during this session of the course will be to deliberate upon how they can abandon the traditional role of the classroom teacher in favor of the teacher who embraces project- based learning and or inquiry-based learning. In order to abandon one practice for another one has to be convinced that it is worth the risk. It is a risk because the teacher must leave his/her comfort zone and venture into an unfamiliar role as the classroom teacher, the facilitator and guide.</h4>
 <h4>In the required videos, we saw several schools who used the PBL method as a best practice. There were several testimonials by experts, footage of several classes in which the projects were in progress and positive comments made by students involved. There seemed to be a range in the structure of the projects from the tightly teacher-structured projects similar to the science magnet school in Newsome Park, Virginia to the teacher guided project in which 10th grade students in Seattle, Washington were designing a high school for the year 2050 to the loosely structured ones of West Hawaii Exploration School where students select their own topics and conduct research. I thought that the testimonials were interesting. Seymour Papert, professor at MIT, suggested that teachers give up the notion of teaching a curriculum and replace it with a system wherein the student learns what he needs. He also asserted that because technology is available today, students with various interests and abilities can better express themselves. They can pursue their interests which is more exciting than following curriculum. Bruce Alberts of the National Academy of Scientists said that project-based learning is a method or an opportunity in which the student gets to feel what it is like to be a scientist.</h4>
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 <h4>I thought the arguments in favor of project based learning were more teacher friendly than the articles on inquiry-based learning. In the article entitled &quot;Why Teach With Project Learning: Providing Students with a Well-Rounded Classroom Experience&quot; [http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-introduction] it stated that the purpose of PBL is to enable the students to retain knowledge. It defined project learning as group based, engaged learning that enables students to develop self confidence and self direction. This was a bit warm and fuzzy to me. I favored the definition that I read in the article entitled &quot;It's All About the Curriculum: Designing a Student Centered Program&quot; by Sandy Mittelsteadt . Here PBL was defined as a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills around authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks. [http://www.edutopia.org/its-all-about-curricula] In the article entitled &quot;Students Thrive on Cooperation and Problem Solving&quot; Bob Pearlman did not define PBL but he did state what is was not and I quote,&quot;But don't confuse PBL with simply doing activities injected into traditional education to enliven things as a culminating event for a learning unit.&quot; [http://www.edutopia.org/node/2704] Therefore the issue for me is : What are the benefits of PBL and how does one implement this method.</h4>
 <h4>According to &quot;Why Teach With Project Learning: Providing Students With a Well-Rounded Classroom Experience&quot; the benefits of using this method are that students become better skilled at organization, research,and communication with peers and adults. That same article touted that PBL was useful because it sparks student desire to explore and investigate and that it is an effective way to integrate technology into the curriculum by incorporating computers, white boards, GPS devices digital technology and editing equipment. I rather liked the comment that I read in Diane Demee -Benoit's blog [http://www.edutopia.org/does-project-based-learning-lead-higher-student-achievement] where she said that once teachers and students abandon the traditional teaching/learning mode in the classroom and embrace PBL neither of the two want to return to the conventional classroom.</h4>
 <h4>It appears that PBL is at first expensive and then time consuming because the teacher must have many materials and spend many hours planning. However, if she is resourceful, she can reduce the costs of the materials necessary to complete the projects. There were two ways to implement that I found interesting. The first was recommended by Diane Demee -Benoit's. She stated: &quot;<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">The teachers I know who truly understand how to do PBL design projects (and accompanying assessments) do so with curricular standards in mind. They include students in development of project ideas that are real and important to the kids. They focus on an &quot;essential&quot; or &quot;critical&quot; question that guides the PBL-investigation process. They think about assessment at the beginning and decide on project deliverables that allow for multiple forms of assessment. All this good planning and thinking leads to students who are well-prepared for tests.&quot; [http://www.edutopia.org/does-project-based-learning-lead-higher-student-achievement] I like the idea of backward mapping, starting with the assessment first and a rubric, of course, that allows students to know what is expected of them. This plan was rather simplistic but I liked it. The plan that John Pearlman delivers was more definitive and specific.</span> He stated that, &quot;Real PBL, by contrast, is deep, complex, rigorous, and integrated. Its fundamentals are fourfold:</h4>
 <ul><li><h4>Create teams of three or more students to work on an in-depth project for three to eight weeks.</h4>
</li><li><h4>Introduce a complex entry question that establishes a student's need to know, and scaffold the project with activities and new information that deepens the work.</h4>
</li><li><h4>Calendar the project through plans, drafts, timely benchmarks, and finally the team's presentation to an outside panel of experts drawn from parents and the community.</h4>
</li><li><h4>Provide timely assessments and/or feedback on the projects for content, oral and written communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and other important skills.</h4>
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 <h4>He maintained that the project must be built around eight learning outcomes which are &quot;content standards, collaboration, critical thinking, oral communication, written communication, career preparation, citizenship and ethics, and technology literacy -- which they embed in all projects, assessments, and grade reports.&quot; He outlined the process in this way: Instructors start each unit by throwing students into a real-world or realistic project that engages interest and generates a list of things they need to know. In the same article, he insisted as did Diane Demee-Benoit that teachers present the scoring rubric before the project is assigned. By doing so, the students can use the rubric as a tool to that helps them to evaluate their progress.</h4>
 <h4>In another article that I read entitled &quot;Math for Multiple Intelligences, the teacher took a thematic approach to teaching math. There the teacher, Gretchen Bulher, explained that she made a paradigm shift and began to teach math in thematic units. She said that she used real-life situations in which mathematical concepts were related to each other. Her emphasis was on problem solving and not memorization. I was most impressed by her self-evaluation. Under the subheading &quot;Changes&quot; she wrote:</h4>
 <h4>&quot;When I sat down two years ago to re-evaluate my teaching, I realized that I needed to make four major changes:</h4>
 <ul><li><h4>I needed to make sure I was getting through the math content effectively. <em>How could I encourage mastery of the content each day?</em></h4>
</li><li><h4>I needed to show the students how math applied to their lives. <em>How could I teach them the required skills while showing them when it could be used?</em></h4>
</li><li><h4>I wanted the students to become more independent learners and thinkers. <em>How could they start to see connections between information and manipulate between mathematical patterns and concepts on their own?</em></h4>
</li><li><h4>I wanted to use different learning styles to interpret and analyze information within each unit and lecture no more than about two times a week. <em>How could I provide learning experiences that used the student’s strengths to interpret and analyze the mathematical information I had given them to determine an answer?&quot; http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/mathmultintell/651</em></h4>
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 <h4>There is a challenge that is set before teachers to make PBL work. Teachers must design great projects that are based on real-life situations that answer real-life questions, that enable students to master the standards and motivate them to investigate to learn more.</h4>
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Inquiry as it was presented seems to be more suitable for the science classes. I have observed science teachers who used this method of instruction and the students seem the enjoy it very much. Every one was engaged and on task. One of the teachers on our team is a master at using this method. The students can ask questions, find answers and make discoveries during each phase of the process. It appears that this is an expensive endeavor for the teacher who decides to pursue it alone because so many materials are needed for inquiry. Although there were some teachers who received materials as a result of taking training or piloting programs. If a particular science department decides to use this method, then the expense could be shared. I would like to see this method used in an English or math class.<br />
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I appreciated the candid discussion in the article entitled &quot;Inquiry-based Learning.&quot; http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/inquiry7.htm The benefits of using this method are similar to the benefits of using PBL. Students become researchers, investigators, problem solvers and owners of the own learning and in the process they learn to use technology to present what they have learned. I really liked one of the statements that answered the question, What makes it effective? The answer was that it builds on existing knowledge and skill. Also I liked the idea that the students are evaluated on both the product and the process and not only do they evaluate themselves but they also evaluate their resources and their teacher.<br />
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I do not believe that the PBL articles listed barriers to quality PBL. They were implied but not stated. In this particular article the barriers were listed and each barrier started with the words &quot;lack of.&quot; The barriers were &quot;lack of communication, entry skills, organization and guidance resources, planning, teaching and learning, and meaningfulness to students. Like PBL this is a method that requires a great deal of planning, forethought and management of the process and the classroom behaviors.<br />
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I think that teachers shy away from these two methods because they do not think that their students will learn what they need to know, will stay on task, will work diligently on the project and will consequently fail their course. I think that their fears are valid. I teach ESL online. One of my Chinese students skyped me to complain about a &quot;boring&quot; three- week project that he was trying to finish. He feared that the project would not measure-up to the standards and that he would have to do it again. Is it possible that students suffer from burn-out over the course of some projects? I suspect that is why teachers cling to the paper and pencil activities because they can accumulate grades for them during the grading period. Yet, clearly this form or teaching is not productive. Therefore, in order for either method to be effective, the teacher needs to evaluate his/her teaching style and classroom management. Then he needs to discern the areas in which improvement is needed, set some short-term easy-to-accomplish goals for himself. Next he needs to observe each student, their learning styles, take into account their level of maturity and work ethic and knowledge of the subject matter and then design short projects that he can manage as well as ones that the students can complete successfully and then progress toward the longer more complex problem-solving research projects. Both the student and teacher should enjoy the process and learn from it. The teacher should not feel like a soldier on the battle field and the student should not feel like the enemy.<br />
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Joe Lambert the co-founder of digital story telling defines it as the interplay of the elements of music, text, voice, moving images and sound. He states that there are seven basic elements of a digital story. Digital story telling involves the use of different kinds of technology and equipment from the microphone to the digital camera. One must tell a story and insert text, graphics, moving images and sound and then edit repeatedly. Then ask himself if the all components fit. It is always good to ask someone else to view and critique it. Storytelling has always been apart of human experience. However, in the past it was just reserved for the few who were deemed talented as writers, actors, actresses, lyricists, singers and or minstrels. Now the youth and the not-so-young can tell their stories and publish them. http://members.shaw.ca/dbrear/Digital_Story_Telling. This is a an awesome way by which the student who is creative can present and share information. It appears that we have addressed the right, left and whole brain approach to teaching and learning this week. Now I am tired so bon soir, mon prefessor. Passee une bonne nuit.