Our goal for this project is to provide the motivation and support for teachers to get involved with Project-Based Learning (PBL) approaches to student learning. Why? Because research has shown, and teachers who use PBL agree - one of the most interesting, efficient, and meaningful ways to cover the curriculum, teach the standards, and address individual learning styles is through the use of integrated, authentic, projects.
On this site, we have focused our primary attention on projects and PBL for the late elementary and middle school grades (grades 5-8), but all teachers will find projects and information to help them implement great PBL in their classrooms. We want to especially help and support those teachers who are new to PBL, or who have limited experience doing PBL in their classrooms. In this light, we believe teachers initially need a small, focused set of 'exemplary' projects, representing the best practices of other teachers who use this approach and covering a broad spectrum of standards-based content and technology and skills. These projects include step-by-step instruction and examples for how to proceed and are built around themes, issues, and concerns that are real to middle level students. Although these projects integrate technology into the curriculum, they also allow teachers and students the freedom to scale-up (or -down) according to the technology skills they have or want to acquire...
