Blog Post # 9

What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning?

In the first article Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning it references that every good project needs to fulfill two criteria one) "students must perceive the work as personally meaningful" two) project must fulfill an educational purpose. The article gave a very descriptive evaluation of the "Seven essential elements" for Project Based Learning. According to the article the seven essential elements are as follows.
1. Need to Know
2. Driving question
3. Students voice and choice
4. 21st century skills
5. Inquiry and Innovation
6. Feedback and Revision
7. A publicly presented product.

In the video Project Based Learning for Teachers it highlights all the key points of PBL from a teaching stand point. In a sense motivates teachers to be inspired by the potentials of using project based learning in their classroom. The benefits of using project based learning is that is requires students to go deeper in the material. It prepares them for college and life after school, communication skills, life skills and the ability to problem solve.

The video What motivates Students Today was the most inspiring resource we had for this weeks blog assignment. Some of the answers of students who were fairly young of what motivates them was amazing. Some of these kids who had to have been in elementary school, were motivated now because they wanted a better future when they grew up. A lot of the students had decided what they wanted to be when they grew up, and knew they had to be successful now in school to achieve those goals later in life. Of course there were students in the video who were motivated by being acknowledged or by some sort of awards system. But overall I was very impressed with the answers from these students as to what motivates them.

Ten Sites Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration in Project Based Learning is an excellent resource for teachers to use as a guide for incorporating technology and project based learning in their classroom. There are several sites that I haven't heard of before and after reviewing found very interesting.

I choose the Project Based Learning In PE for my last resource because I read one of my fellow classmates blog about not knowing how they would use PBL in physical education. This article gave a good idea on how to use PBL even in physical education. The idea was for high school students to create physical fitness  plans for middle school students.

I think that teachers and students can teach us everything about Project Based Learning. Through the resources given within in this blog along with numerous others throughout this semester we have been shown the way to teach using project based learning. As students in this class we have been shown how to learn through project based learning. The benefits are obvious its just now in our hands to take what he have learn and use it in our future classrooms.

C4K summary

C4K # 5

I was assigned to Sindy G this week, her latest post was about Thanksgiving. Sindy's post was rather short explaining about how she enjoyed Thanksgiving and cooking. She also expressed that she always had family from out of town come to visit for the holiday. I commented to her that I also enjoyed the holiday and having out of town family come to visit.


C4K # 6
I was assigned to Rob this week who wrote a blog about job shadowing. He described the experience in his blog and discussed how he initially had a negative outlook on job shadowing. But through the experience, he was surprised that he actually had fun and really enjoyed his time there. I commented to Rob that I was glad he enjoyed his experience and that I hoped he had a successful career in business.

C4K # 7

This week I was assigned to Tressie C. a 7th grade student in Mrs. L's class. Her blog post was about a the last book she had read of a series of book by Rick Riordan. The book was titled "The Last Olympian" about a group of humans who were half human and half Gods. She gave a great summary of the book and suggested that her audience read the entire series. I commented to her that had never read the series she had read but that she did a really nice job on her blog and that I hoped she found another great series of books that she enjoyed as much as this one.


C4K #8

Mckenzie T is a 7th grade student in Oklahoma and she wrote her latest blog assignment about her Spring Break this year. Mckenzie went to a spelling B in Dallas, TX and then spent some time with her family there at the beach. She also wrote about a horrible experience she had on the ferry ride, where the ferry actually got lost and they had to wait for a boat to come and guide the ferry back to shore. I commented on her blog post basically telling her that I liked the experience she had with her family over Spring Break and I thought that she would keep those memories forever.

Blog Post #10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?
We can learn a lot from Mrs. Cassidy's approach to the use of technology in her classroom. I was certainly amazed by what the first grade students were capable of doing in her first video. The level of excitement that the students expressed about working on the projects in her class was very encouraging to me as a future educator.

The first grade students were able to create their own blogs and were very encouraged by the fact that they could see improvement in their work as they progressed through the course. The students in the video talked about how they enjoyed publishing their work for others to see, they also liked that they could read comments from people about their work. Mrs. Cassidy's students showed their knowledge about internet safety by talking about only using first names and not correlating students pictures with their names. As a future educator I can learn a lot from Mrs. Cassidy and how she used technology in her classroom.

I think Mrs. Cassidy had a very interesting perspectives that she expressed in her Cassidy 13 Part 1 she talked about how technology is not going away this really stuck with me. We can see that technology is not going to disappear it is going to continue to progress and become even more apart of our lives than it already is (hard to believe because its in our hands every second already). I also thought it was very shocking that Mrs. Cassidy actually did not use technology in her personal life as she said in the Skype video. But I really like her suggestion when Dr. Strange asked her about where she would suggest students start. She stated that we should start in the area that interest us the most what ever we are most passionate about start there weather it be videos, blogs, photography etc.

Project #9

Project 13

Links for the project

Project Planner

Content Rubric

Oral Presentation Rubric

Project Calendar

Blog Post # 8

" What can we learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch?"

Randy Pausch Last Lecture


This lecture given by Randy Pausch was just so inspiring. I can't imagine anyone in the world not walking away from this lecture without a feeling of inspiration in some degree. But as future educators the lecture is just that much more motivational and inspiring. Pausch's lecture is centered around the fact that this is his last lecture because he had been diagnosed with cancer and only had a short time left to live.


But Pausch makes it apparent in the beginning of the lecture of his motive and he clearly doesn't want to discuss cancer or any home remedies. Randy Pausch instead chose to talk about "how to follow childhood dreams" in his "last lecture" he discussed his life and the trials and tribulations he had been through in his life time, and how to preserver through the brick walls in life. Mr. Pausch is obviously a very successful man. I found that for him to very casually lecture about his short comings and failures that lead to his success sent a very powerful message to his audience.

I can honestly say that I was very inspired by this lecture I took notes and some life lessons from Mr. Pausch's lecture and life experience. Some of my favorite quotes he mentioned in his lecture were ;
-"loyalty is a two way street"
-"apologize when you screw up",
-"Don't complain just work harder"
 -"Don't bail the best gold is at the bottom of the barrels of crap".

C4T Summary

C4T #1

Get your Game On-Do the Snow Clothes Challenge by Kathy Cassidy was a delightful blog post about students up North having a race to put on all their snow clothes to go outside. Although I can't even imagine having the task of ensuring a whole classroom of students, got on all their layers of clothes for below freezing temperatures. I really enjoyed how this teacher took the struggle and made it a fun challenge and it spread after she posted a video on her blog.



C4T #2


Blogging in a classroom with only 1 Ipad by Kathy Cassidy was the blog I was assigned to this week. I found the article very interesting and informative. Cassidy discussed how a teacher could have her students blog when there was only 1 Ipad in the classroom. She listed some resources such as Easy blogger jr. which is a app, that can be purchased on the ipad and have multiple users. This app seems to be very user friendly even for young users. Each student can upload a picture to be used as a icon for their blog, and even make voice recording for pictures within the blog.


I found this article to be a great resource. As future educators we hope to have access to an abundance of ipads for our classroom, but unfortunately we may not have that access. This article gave us information to still be able to have our students blogging even with just one Ipad.