PBS Teachers Innovation Awards: Entry for you to see, please vote! Networked Elementary Class, with PBL

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3-5 Science and Tech, NETWORKED CLASSROOM with PBL


Entry in PBS Teachers Innovation Awards
Imagine being a 5th-grade student with a face-to-face AND “networked” classroom. You have continuous access to your “class learning habitat.”
Imagine being able to communicate inside and outside of school with
your learning community. Your motivation and communication skills are
soaring! My homeroom class is organized in a Project Zero Teaching for
Understanding format, focused on exploration of Generative Topics in
the yearlong thematic study of Change and Connections. Students in the
class are actively engaged in Problem-based Learning, focusing on
global issues related to our Life on Earth studies (animal migration,
wildlife management, fires, epidemiology of animal diseases). Students
explore complex problems, share their investigations and
recommendations with peers, parents, the local community, and experts.
Students go online in school, at home, and while traveling. They
connect with each other, the teacher, school librarian, curriculum
coordinator, principal, older students, and even grandparents. Students
post essays and get comments online. They post and participate in
hyperlinked current events discussions. Students design
autobiographical profile pages; they share class work with each other.
Imagine having your elementary school students nestled into an online
social network, sharing podcasts of storytelling and poetry-reading,
sharing songs they’ve composed, photo albums, slideshows, book
recommendations, and short stories. Sharing of student work no longer
needs to be confined to “papers for the teacher,” or displays on
bulletin boards;” it can all be shared in a within the networked online
community, with learners responding to each other in an ongoing,
asynchronous form.