Thursday, February 14, 2013
Challenge Based Learning
Challenge Based Learning is education with a clear purpose. It is engaging, meaningful, and relevant to our students and their lives. I really enjoyed reading and exploring about Challenge Based Learning and all of the opportunities it presents. I think the author made a good point about many of the assignments in a lot of curricula lacking real-world context or any real meaning for our students. Education is for the students, not the teachers, so it should be meaningful and engaging for them. What's the point of education if it does not mean anything for our students outside of the classroom? The different projects and ideas outlined in the article and on the websites seem applicable and relevant. If I were a high school student, I would have been so excited to learn in such a productive, exciting way. Students have the ability to make impacts on the world, and through Challenge Based Learning, they get to make amazing impacts while learning. The article says, "Challenge Based Learning applies what is known about the emerging learning styles of high school students and leverages the powerful new technologies that provide new opportunities to learn to provide an authentic learning process that challenges students to make a difference." I definitely think Challenge Based Learning is an excellent approach and tool in education.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I like your point about how education is for the students. It is something that a lot of teachers seem to forget in high school. They focus so much just teaching the standards that they forget that the goal of education is to have the students learn and the best way to do that is to have the student's be excited to actually learn. I am excited to work on this project and see all the different ways we can apply challenge based learning.
ReplyDeleteI think that CBL is great for high school students, but can also be used with younger grades as well. If you are doing a project like this with younger grades the students would need more guidance and to perhaps work in larger groups in order to split up the work more. I agree with you that this is a great way to provide authentic learning opportunities to students, so that they can feel really connected to the knowledge that they learned. I also like your tie in to the 8 core beliefs of special educators, "school is for the students, not the teachers." This is important to keep in mind when developing instruction for your classroom, and CBL is a great way to provide a student oriented educational experience. This is a great response.
ReplyDeleteJustine,
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you said, "Education is for the students, not the teachers." I think as teachers, we can sometimes forget that we have to create curriculum that is in the interest of the students not ourselves. We have to create meaning and value of learning for the students and I think that Challenge Based Learning can definitely be a great tool for helping students understand and apply what they are learning in class to their own personal lives. I can't wait to be teachers!
I like how you ask what the point of education is if our students can't use it outside the classroom. I am in total agreement that students need some sort of connection to their lives to make content important to learn about. No 3rd grader is going to be interested in math if you talk about it in terms of finances or budgeting. Involving your students in the content makes the learning process more fun and important to them. Like you said "Education is for the students, not the teachers."
ReplyDeleteJustine~
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that I think challenged based learning is a really great way to keep kids involved in their education to make a difference and learn more productively. I also didn't get to focus on challenged based learning while i was in school. the assignments were final and the directions were clear and concise. There wasn't much change in curriculum for a chance for us to do more hands on exploration into deeper and more specific topics. I don't know about you but i tend to learn better when I can be hands on and I wish my teachers growing up could have based their teaching on a challenged based level.
Good job!
Katelynn