Today began with a continuation of building my knowledge base and expertise in designing Project Based Lessons. The Buck Institute for Education also known as BIE is a treasure trove of resources in which one can get pleasantly lost in. I focused most specifically on the resources found in PBL World discovering a variety of project based lessons and different formats for planning the PBL lessons. What each lesson had in common though was it’s focused on being student rather than teacher centered. The best lessons created room for a variety of outcomes allowing students to use their previous experiences, creativity and collaboration skills to come up with their own solutions.
As part of my exploration, I discovered the 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning Blog written by Michael Gorman. In his award-winning blog, Gorman has brought together a wide variety of resources to use as idea starters and resources in planning PBL units. There is a strong emphasis on STEM resources, but the blog is by no means limited to these as it also provides PBL resources on gamification, language arts, philosophy, history and character development.
The most exciting part of today’s discoveries, playing and creating, was the development of my first customized
. Google Custom Search Engine which can be found at pgildersPBLsearch. The customization feature allows the developer to refine the search results thus helping students to learn the basics of online research while providing parameters that will keep them on topic and with grade and reading level appropriate material. The developer can limit key word searches to the topic at hand. The pgildersPBLsearch allows the researcher to search the open web for articles and images, but the site emphasizes the customized online resources I specifically want users to go to. Keywords added to this site include: PBL, Project Based Learning, Custom Search, Google, Google Searches and Grading. I’m looking forward to refining the site and getting feedback from teachers as they made suggestions for resources to add from their personal repertoires.
If you’re interested in creating your own search engine, Gennexttech has a nice youtube video tutorial to guide you through the process which can be found at Gennexttech Google Search Tutorial.
Education, Leadership, and Pedagogy 