Press Pause

I have begun the journey of exploring other student's blogs. This is so exciting for me as everyone has something to teach :-) If you have a hunger for learning, and are willing to listen to others, you can learn so much. One of my favorite quotes is:

"You were given two ears and one mouth for a reason. Talk less and listen more."

So often we as humans have the desire to be heard. Perhaps this is caused by the continuous noise of the environment in which we live? Sometimes if we are able to silence our minds, we can be open to hearing the insights of others. There is so much we can learn.

"Every now and again, it is good to pause in our pursuit of happiness to just be happy."

- Guillaume Apollinaire

I was pleased to come across a post by my fellow student Janice. She had shared a post on project based learning by Justin Curran. Justin used a technology platform that I was unaware of called Piktochart. What a neat way to present an idea!

I was intrigued by Justin's ideas on the 5 Elements of Project Based Learning and the order in which they appeared:

1 - Envision - What do we need to do? What needs will it fill? Who will use this idea? This helps the students to understand the problem or idea in front of them. This inquiry based learning model is started with an open ended question or challenge. When we can trigger the students to think seriously about an idea or project, it helps to create long term retention.

2. Define - When we help to define the project, it aids the student by creating the 'need to know'. If they do not feel a need to know the information, they will not be engaged as it does not mean anything to them personally, nor does it fulfill an educational purpose.

3. Ideate - This requires the students to explore the idea at hand, to discover solutions, and then to generate a design. I particularly like this as it requires skills such as: communication, problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration (if it is group based). These are all examples of the Blooms Taxonomy of Higher Thinking:

4. Prototype - This is where the students transform their ideas into physical form.

5. Test - I was interested to learn that one of the criteria of this was to try out the product or performances in a public setting which helps the students to use the observations of others in order to refine their project. This reminded me greatly of my training in Toastmasters International. Each time you perform a public speech in front of your peers, they provide you with immediate feedback and suggest points of improvement. This helps you to advance through the various levels of public speaking. I had sort of put this method in the back of my mind, rather than in the front where I realize now that it should be. I plan to re-integrate this into my teaching.

I am glad that I pressed pause in order to take the time to learn from your blog Janice, which led me to this wonderful research conducted by Justin.

I plan to implement these ideas into both my blog, and my in-class presentations. I am eager to move beyond the conventional PowerPoint method of visual instruction, and to try out this new piktochart platform.

Resources:

https://liveyouramazing.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/project-based-learning/

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/16242050-project-based-learning