Robin is a teacher at High Tech High, a project-based learning school in San Diego (I currently teach at the sister campus in San Marcos). His comments about PBL are pretty enlightening--not to mention that his insight into the psychology of teachers is uncanny.
One really significant point that Robin makes is that project-based learning isn’t project-oriented learning. As Robin explains, with project-oriented learning, the teacher teaches the students “everything they need to know” before the students actually start working on their project. Robin states, “The project is oriented towards the things the kids study in class.”
In my opinion, if the students are just being told what they should know before they start a project, then the students are experiencing far fewer opportunities to encounter challenges and overcome them. If they aren’t finding solutions to authentic problems, then they are missing out on an opportunity to experience more authentic learning.
In the past, it would have been more difficult for a teacher to teach to a project-based learning model. But with new technologies, such as the internet and social media, students can research, connect, and cooperate in ways that were not possible before. Now, students don’t have to learn everything in the classroom before they create. Instead, they can learn while they create. The learning is happening through the project, and not before it, and that, to me, is project-based learning.
Robin, J. (2011, March 2). What Project Based Learning Isn’t. Retrieved from http://howtovideos.hightechhigh.org/video/265/What+Project+Based+Learning+Isn't