Today a bunch of Michigan educators braved the ice and snow to participate in a 3-day Project Based Learning Workshop at Boyne Mountain. The facilitator is David Ross from the Buck Institute for Education. He is in the picture (middle) with Marilyn Totten and David Schade, 7th grade social studies teachers from Walled Lake.Today was an enjoyable day of collaboration and learning. We began by brainstorming qualities that we think are important for all high school graduates (being a team player, problem solver, communicator, tech savvy, etc). Mr. Ross says that educators expect our students to have all these qualities, yet we do not necessarily provide them the opportunities and learning experiences to help them attain these qualities. He believes (as do I) that project based learning instructional methods, when done right, can help us better prepare our students.
Tomorrow we will work on the process of designing effective projects. I am particularly interested in learning new strategies to make students individually accountable for group projects. The Walled Lake team will be identifying a project to go along with new 7th grade social studies curriculum.
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