A.++Why+Projects?

Project-based learning, also known as "challenge-based learning," transforms the traditional classroom from teacher-centered to learner-centered.

Visit Apple's Challenge-Based Learning page and watch the videos linked there to see how forming essential questions can drive students to personalize their learning.

In other words, the teacher is no longer viewed as the provider of content, which the students then memorize and then send back to the teacher as evidence of learning. In a project-based activity, unit of instruction, or curriculum, students engage in the learning process by taking the driver's seat. The teacher becomes a guide, carefully structuring the project assignment so that students are given the opportunity to gain the desired understandings, answer the essential questions, and interact in a personal, meaningful way with subject-area content.

Students are required to go beyond memorization or reporting back. They must move a step further and select, interpret, analyze, evaluate, and even create new solutions or products as a result of involvement in the project activities.

Consider the "new" Bloom's Taxonomy.

Whichever one you choose, please note that orange, pink, and even purple activites are lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) and green, blue, and yellow activities involve higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), which result in a higher degree of mastery and achievement.

Research supports the effectiveness of an inquiry-based approach to learning. In essence, such an approach is teaching students how to learn, which in turn, creates information-literate adults who can effectively manage information in order to make decisions and learn new skills.

And that's what teaching is all about, isn't it?