Blog Post #11

     In this blog post, we have been tasked with determining what can be learned from a set of videos that show how different teachers utilized PBL in their classrooms.  The videos included Brian Crosby's Back To the Future, Paul Andersen's Blended Learning Cycle, Mark Church Making Learning Invisible, Sam Pane's Building Comics, Dean Shareski's Project Based Learning, and the Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program.

     Time after time in these videos, teachers were able to seamlessly apply project based learning to their classrooms and curricula.  These teachers engaged their students in a multitude of projects ranging from creating comic book characters to collecting data from and launching weather balloons, and I must say that these projects were quite intriguing.  I suppose the take away message from all of these videos is essentially that children shouldn't be limited by what a teacher believes they can do.  The students should really be given the reins to their own education because they are obviously quite capable of achieving astounding feats on their own, so instead of giving a student a specific goal or  stringent objective I believe that it would be much wiser to set them on a path and watch as they crack the sky.  In essence, I would say that my belief in the limitless potential of the individual and the belief in a new generation of learners was reinforced.

     In closing, I will leave you with John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem High Flight in honor of the limitless potential that all students possess.  I have also included a picture entitled Girl Touches Stars by Vreckovka because the stars are out there you just have to reach for them. 

                                             "Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark or even eagle flew --

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."