PBL- Project Based Learning

I have recently had the pleasure of experiencing a PD session with Thom Markham from America on PBL. This is an approach that this year I have been attempting to do, which has been a challenge but I am liking this approach so far. 

I liked many of what this man had to say especially about the way education is changing and in my view needs to happen. He did bring up an interesting point and that is children can access many things on their phone so how important is content when we can look that up? I was listening to a podcast where Ted Dintersmith spoke about how  we are training children up for different jobs from 20 years ago and we need to consider this when teaching. This did make me think how content is important but I agree strongly that certain skills are essential in the 21st century and maybe we need to look at this more. The three C's are mentioned Creativity, Collaboration and Critical thinking  which are definitely skills the children need. The PBL approach helps to gain these important skills.

The driving questions is very important to gain the best out of the PBL experience. Although the process can be challenging to come up with a driving question it is worth it to get a good one. When I looked around it was great to see all of the teachers working at the PD session in what I would call a very collaborative approach to working out these driving question. The guidance from Thom during this process was invaluable as he guided us well to come up with driving questions easily due to his vast experience. 

I feel more confident after the PD sessions to come up with a driving question and what this looks like.