PBL Case Study #6: The Mock Election Project
Background As the presidential election neared its final stages back in October, Kristen Dickey's 5th grade students had a plethora of questions: What is the electoral college? How does it work? Why do some states get more votes than others? What's the difference...
PBL Case Study #4: Creating Eco-Friendly Busses
Story of PBL Transformation: Creating Eco-Friendly Busses When I first met Hirotake Wang as a facilitator/ co- founder of Futures Academy at The International School of Beijing, I knew he was special. At 12 years old, he was already trilingual, a standout tennis...
PBL Case Study #5: Improving Social and Emotional Well Being During CoVid
How do you ensure the mental, social and emotional well- being of students when you can't even see them in person? This is the challenge Mark Myers, a secondary Physical Education teacher faced when he arrived to his quarantined hotel in Ulabaantar, Mongolia. As a...
PBL Case Study #2: The Food Truck Project
Story of PBL Transformation: Community Food Truck When I met with the 5th grade team at Park Maitland, a small school in Orlando, Florida, they were hoping project-based learning could better develop their students as community problem solvers. And while they didn't...
Story of PBL Transformation Case Study #1: 10th Grade Theater Project
When Anne Robinson, the instructional coach at Gompers Charter School in San Diego approached me, she was hoping her teachers could develop projects that better connected students with the surrounding community. The major challenge was that teachers had no prior...
Five Sample Projects to Engage All Your Online Learners
A few days ago I called up my brother in California to find out how Evie (his daughter/ my niece) was holding up with the recent school closures. He assured me she is doing just fine. During 'music class,' she watches youtube tutorials on how to play guitar chords;...
Industrial Revolution: Assembly-Line vs. Tradesperson
School (s): The Harbour School Hong Kong Project Summary: In a Grade 6 social studies unit, students learned about the industrial revolution and its cultural and social impact on creativity. In The Foundry, they extended their learning by analyzing the efficiency of...
Inventions of the 15th Century
School (s): The Harbour School Hong Kong Project Summary: Students in grade 5 were studying inventions of 15th Century, which included the Gutenberg Printing Press. Each pair of students developed a page of a class-book about other inventions of the time and then used...
Chinese New Year Digital Story Project
School (s): YW and YC Schools Across Asia Project Summary: Digital Stories are easy and fun videos put together on the computer that combine pictures/ illustrations, audio and text in a story that communicates a valuable lesson. Here is...
Protecting our Farmland
School: Yew Wah International School of Rizhao Project Summary: The related challenges that the children were involved in were as follows; Rainwater Harvesting challenge, Organic Garden-farming in a local village,...