PBL Blog

Every teacher knows that STEM-based learning is the wave of the future. Most also know that STEM is incomplete without art and literature. Project-based learning is an ideal way to master STEAM skills in a way that feels relevant to students. Projects help students master useful skills, keep learning fun, and allow students to direct…

Critical thinking, communication, creative thinking, and collaboration are vital in the workplace, at home, and in virtually every interaction your students will have. Yet today’s teaching styles consistently fail to help students master these “four Cs.” The right curriculum can overcome this deficit, helping your students prepare for the real world while still meeting or…

Learning needs to be fun, relevant, and engaging. Hundreds of studies on how children learn tell us that children learn best when they’re playing or investigating the world around them. Kids demand relevant learning environments. Yet, today’s educational landscape affords children few opportunities to learn through play and investigation. Twenty-first century skills require a demanding,…

In a TED talk titled: “Can we build AI without losing control over it“, Sam Harris–a neuroscientist and philosopher–claims that Intelligence is a product of information processing, and as machines are better and faster in processing information and handling huge loads of data, if left unchecked, machines will eventually take us over. In a different…

When employees are working on a project at the workplace, it is directed to achieve a goal. This goal is usually laced with a series of problems that workers have to tackle before success is achieved. Whether the goal is to produce a part for an engineering project or to develop a marketing plan for…

Schools are adopting project-based learning in growing numbers. Although it may seem like a trend, it really stems from a development in pedagogical thinking over the past fifty years that advocated a shift away from teachers imparting knowledge to relatively passive students, to learners actively participating in the co-construction of knowledge. Being a complete departure…

According to the Buck Institute for Education, there are forty years of accumulated evidence that the instructional strategies and procedures that make up standard-focused project-based learning are effective in building deep content understanding, raising academic achievement, and encouraging student motivation to learn. Evidence that has greatly contributed to a growing number of schools adopting or…

For many years I was teaching students computer programming. I was really fascinated with LCSI’s Microworlds and Hypercard because both provided students with a multimedia environment where students could become creators of digital products. Most projects focused on a real problem that students were trying to solve and they used built-in text, graphics, media and…

Education is flooded with buzzwords. Those usually represent trending methods or subjects that everyone is talking about, due to their potential to transform education. Some of those words are project-based learning, problem-based learning, critical thinking, 21st century skills, and deep learning. These words are interesting because everyone is talking about them and try to do…

The headlines about the latest OECD report were loud and clear:“Computers do not improve pupil results.” These controversial headlines were the outcome of a study published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) examining the impact of school technology on international test results such as the PISA test taken in more than 70…

I don’t like tests. I have never been very good at it. I get extremely anxious in tests, making me forget half of the things I studied. Throughout the years I got used to them and performed better, but I never thought much of them. I could never understand what was the purpose of doing…

Computer programming is hot again. Not like in the 80s, when Seymour Papert’s Logo programming became popular for several years and then declined when the education world failed to see the evolving technological revolution that was taking place in daily life. This time the movement to teach kids to code carries with it a sense…