Giving Compass' Take:

• The Buck Institute for Education has produced a series of videos that demonstrate Project-based Learning projects in real-time, so that educators can see the nuts and bolts.

• How can funders help educators access information about and effectively implement PBL? 

• Read about how PBL works.

Seeing video examples of high-quality projects is persuasive and instructive. In our workshops and presentations in the past we’ve relied on a few “classics” from Deeper Learning network members Edutopia, EL Education, Envision Schools, and High Tech High, or the occasional home-made video from a teacher or school we found online. Now we have created our own videos to better exemplify our Gold Standard Project-based Learning (PBL) model in action.

Shot by veteran education film/video producer Steve Brown of Mobile Digital Arts, these videos have high production values and really capture the nuts and bolts of a PBL unit from beginning to end. Steve managed — as unobtrusively as possible in the real-time, natural habitat of the classroom — to get close to teacher-student and student-to-student interactions, and he interviewed the teachers explaining their projects. Each video shows four phases of the project: the launch (entry event and driving question); building knowledge and skills; developing products and answers to the driving question; and presenting products and answers to the driving question.

See this video and more project-based learning in action by John Larmer at Buck Institute for Education.