Week 8

The G.G. Worley article, “Project Based Learning through Global Learning Communities of K12 Students"

This is an exciting approach to learning that I have heard about previously, and even talked about to other teachers, but still haven’t galvanized the ideas, technologies, and supports to try it.  I think, however, that to bring to my school some form of project based learning through global communities would really heighten our student’s learning experiences.  I know that this is something I must figure out how to make happen.  I realize a lot of doing such a thing is having the right technologies at hand and good planning, and coordination.  After reading this article, I find that there are lots of suggestions on what you can do, more importantly, there are important suggestions on how one should proceed in grouping students to work on such projects.  Further, I like how the article clarifies what is meant by cooperation and collaboration, as they are quite different, the first referring to  dividing labor among members to get a task done, and collaboration has to do with pooling efforts to solve problems.  Students need to develop both skills, and the experts in this article assert that one of the ways of doing this is through the experience of working in global communities to solve real world problems.  Another thing I’d like to note is how this article clarified the difference between problem based learning, which has to do with providing students opportunities to explore authentic, but simulated problems to find answers to often following a predetermined learn path (Williams,1992; Barron,1998). On the other hand, project based learning has to do with learning that is structure around an essential question where students are allowed open-ended questions in the development of a project.  Finally, the digital suggestions were worth  looking into, and think this was a good read to help encourage teachers to think beyond the classroom and start thinking about ways to have their students experience global learning.