My unit requires them to create a fire escape plan from my room. They could use Dabbleboard.com, Sketchup, or Google Earth to create the plan, but they also have to use research from the Firesafety.gov site. For two groups of students I was not there to facilitate, because I had to step out of the room, but everyone seemed to go right to Dabbleboard to create the plan, because they told me- "it was easy." It was a lot of fun for the kids and myself, and I highly recommend teachers give it a try. Here's a sample of the finished product from Dabbleboard.
PBL: A Concept:
PBL: A Concept:
To help myself and other instructors understand the history and concept of Problem Based Learning, I created this concept map below. Please click on this link to get a better view:
http://mywebspiration.com/publish.php?i=448697a37
To explain what is happening here in this concept, I relate PBL to a light bulb (an efficient LED, of course). What gives the light bulb (or Problem Based Learning) its electricity or its energy, are the ideas and concepts of thinking- created by the greatest critical thinkers of all time. In this case, Socrates, who, with his method of Socratic questioning, actually got himself killed. Descarte, whose philosophy of thought ("I think, therefore, I am") and Darwin, and his aptitude for questioning life's origins, give PBL its roots.
That basically brings us into the 20th Century, when education as a standardized mode of learning, came into being. The theories of Howard Gardner, Piaget, Benjamin Bloom, JP Guilford, John Dewey, and Edward DeBono are the filaments whose theories of solving problems and critical thinking drive education to this very day. Any student teacher has read about Bloom's Taxonomy and Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences as part of their standard college curriculum. Their theories are what make the light bulb make the connections it needs to create light.
The four hovering concepts (in light blue) are the main goals of all their theories combined. Brought together in many combinations, our theories of problem based learning want to create people who think systematically, who solve heuristic problems (as opposed to algorithmic), who use models to illustrate ideas, and who make learning meaningful.
The final three "light" bubbles are the ultimate goals of problem based learning: to use authentic situations and processes that will help learning be more meaningful, to promote inquiry that's more than just Googling for an answer, and finally, to create people who think critically about the way that things are made, the systems that control our environment, and who question their very existence.
Dabbleboard.com and MyWebspiration.com
My students are very excited to use a tool like Dabbleboard to create maps and add to graphic organizers. Like Google Docs, it allows students to be able to share a screen and draw in real time. They worked on theirs for two days, saving the URL of the board, so they could go back later.
To create the concept map, I signed up for an account at MyWebspiration.com. It's the web version of Inspiration, but it's very free. I found it pretty easy to use, though it had a little trouble finding the layers when I tried to "send to back." I like tools like this that offer URLs where you can see the larger completed work, because I find the Web and the Cloud easy to organize my work.
I hope that this model can be useful to instructors interested in using PBL for their practices, or studying PBL further.
http://mywebspiration.com/publish.php?i=448697a37
That basically brings us into the 20th Century, when education as a standardized mode of learning, came into being. The theories of Howard Gardner, Piaget, Benjamin Bloom, JP Guilford, John Dewey, and Edward DeBono are the filaments whose theories of solving problems and critical thinking drive education to this very day. Any student teacher has read about Bloom's Taxonomy and Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences as part of their standard college curriculum. Their theories are what make the light bulb make the connections it needs to create light.
The four hovering concepts (in light blue) are the main goals of all their theories combined. Brought together in many combinations, our theories of problem based learning want to create people who think systematically, who solve heuristic problems (as opposed to algorithmic), who use models to illustrate ideas, and who make learning meaningful.
The final three "light" bubbles are the ultimate goals of problem based learning: to use authentic situations and processes that will help learning be more meaningful, to promote inquiry that's more than just Googling for an answer, and finally, to create people who think critically about the way that things are made, the systems that control our environment, and who question their very existence.
Dabbleboard.com and MyWebspiration.com
My students are very excited to use a tool like Dabbleboard to create maps and add to graphic organizers. Like Google Docs, it allows students to be able to share a screen and draw in real time. They worked on theirs for two days, saving the URL of the board, so they could go back later.
To create the concept map, I signed up for an account at MyWebspiration.com. It's the web version of Inspiration, but it's very free. I found it pretty easy to use, though it had a little trouble finding the layers when I tried to "send to back." I like tools like this that offer URLs where you can see the larger completed work, because I find the Web and the Cloud easy to organize my work.
I hope that this model can be useful to instructors interested in using PBL for their practices, or studying PBL further.
