Feb 12, 2015

Project Based Learning

Chloe's school is a new, charter school in our area that believes kids learn best in a project-based environment.  I agree that many children do learn best in this way but it's not for everyone.  You have to be a very self-motivated student with lots of self-discipline and most of all possess a strong sense of curiosity and desire to learn.

The students have done many projects already this year.  Currently, Chloe is working on making a brochure inviting people to come visit the Palace of Versailles.  She was recently interviewed by the local newspaper and explained her latest project, which at the time was the "Hero Project".  She chose a relatively unknown person in the Women's Suffrage Movement, Lydia Taft.

However, it was her first project, "Endangered Animals of Minnesota" that taught her the most as well as challenged her the most.  She learned a lot about how to research, make an bibliography, how not to plagiarize,  and how to make a website.  That last one was hard but worth it.

Luckily, she has a rock star web-designer Dad.  He was able to help teach her the basics about page layout, user friendly designs, fonts, colors and text.  It took many hours to make and many more hours to edit.  But even after all the tears and huffy breaths, she was super proud of what she turned out.  And so was I!

I'm so amazed what kids are able to do with technology these days.  In college I was still using poster board to make presentations.  The World Wide Web was just being introduced to us in 1995.  And here we are 20 years later and my daughter is creating her very own website thanks to Weebly.  What a positive use of technology.


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