Chapter 3: Introduction and a PBL example
As a neophyte business teacher, I often felt frustrated that I was unable to locate teacher resources that covered teaching business in high school, including lesson plans and projects Then again, I believe that this challenge have made me into an innovative and creative teacher since I have to think “outside the box” everyday to stimulate and motivate my students to see the importance of business studies in their lives. I have to create projects that correlate with student’s lives or they would not be interested.
The first time that I assigned a project based learning assignment, my students had no interest or passion for completing the project, since it was teacher assigned…and in retrospect I must add unexciting! Having that experience, I created an international business project for students to explore business customs and culture when conducting business in a foreign country. I directed them to websites to explore business etiquette in different countries and then select a country that they may like to visit or explore for business purposes. The project was a total success since they had to take ownership of the project and teach the class about their country. They also had to compare the business etiquette from their researched country with doing business in North America. They enjoyed exploring the recommended websites and locating new ones and sharing information with their classmates. It was a learning experience for everyone involved, as Moursund (30) aptly stated “IT –assisted PBL lesson “is to create an environment in which the teacher will learn together with the students”.
As stated on page 31, I believe that Web Searched engines should be actively used to research scholarly projects. In my school, students Google everything as their primary source of information for any research. If teachers guide students to explore and evaluate different search engines for accuracy and scholarly information and stress why plagiarism is wrong, then students would be equipped with correct skills for future scholastic career. I was amazed how many of my students used information from the web without citing the source. If they do not cite resource/search engine for any IT-PBL in my class, they would be heavily penalized. I also use citation as part of my rubric for them to get used to it. I do not think that teachers in my school stress this too much, so as a business teacher, I talk about ethics and hope that the students will demonstrate the learning from my class to use as a model in other classes.
Chapter 4: The case for PBL.
According to Moursund, constructivism is when students create their own knowledge in the context of their own experience (35).My favorite teaching experience is when I serve as a facilitator or guide to my students in my business classes. I had the students choose, research and create a lesson on any credit card topic. They then had to teach it to the class using PP or any type of presentation format with guided questions for the class. I recalled that the students enjoyed the experience, were actively engaged and employed team collaboration to gain improved social and academic team skills. This can also be compared to cooperative learning as Moursund discussed. This type of learning works very well in my Business Finance class. Off course this does not work with students in my other classes since they resist being in a team and create all types of problems. One of my challenges as a teacher is to create lessons and projects that encourage students to use higher order thinking skills, since my classes consist of a varied student population with differentiated skills. I believe that using project based learning can address this problem since I could incorporate different learning strategies to meet each student’s skill set.
I can identify with Howard Gardner that people have a variety of different intelligences. In schools teachers have to create lessons that will address and stimulate these students that learn in different ways. This is a very challenging and exhausting task for me since my total class population for five classes’ total seventy five students. But this is a great way to pre evaluate students and also for students to get an insight on their strengths to assist them with future career goals. As for me, I fulfilled three of Gardner’s intelligences which direct me to teaching. I am relieved!
Since my students live in an urban environment and have a high level of “street smarts” pertaining to survival, I try to create PBL projects to hone this type of intelligence. I have observed ‘street smarts’ students actually doing well on projects that relate to their personal interests as Sternberg (43) suggested. This is a work in progress for me since I am still learning how to create the best PBL lessons to help these students develop in these areas and I am also learning about these students and their living environment. I give my students a lot of choices with projects so that they can utilize their skills and enjoy learning. I am really looking forward to using more IT-PBL projects in my lesson with all this new knowledge and strategies from Moursund.
Chandrowtie Susan Fermin
Project Based Learniing
Dr. Skeele/EDST 6306
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