Blog #5

                             This week, we were shown a few videos in which Dr. Strange interviewed a third grade teacher and former student, Anthony Capps about project-based learning. I was quite impressed on how highly he spoke of project-based learning. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and he seemed to enjoy it as well!

                               The first point that Anthony talked about was that having students do projects that revolved around the current subject materials they were learning about made them more excited and motivated to do the work. He recalled an example of a project he had the children do a few months earlier. He had them write a letter to the congressman of Baldwin County about different issues, like what he is doing right, and what he might be doing wrong. They sent them off, and within a couple of days, they received a reply, and just the fact of the letters having the state seal stamped on them, indicating that it is from the official office of Joe Bonner, made the children so eager and excited to do another project like that one. Also, instead of solely counting on the students to complete little worksheets here and there, he at least includes some type of collaborative session in which the children work together and do more hands-on things to make the lesson stick in their minds. Not only is it exciting and motivating for the kids, but it also makes the kids excited about learning in general, and makes them realize that there is more than one way to learn about something! It encourages them to use their own brains to figure things out, rather than relying on someone else all the time.

                                    
                                 Anthony then went on to talk about the programs that he and the students use to look things up when implementing their projects. They are called iCurio and Discovery Ed. iCurio is a search engine that has been programmed to filter out any inappropriate material, and only show material that is consistent to what they are looking up. For example, if a student types in the word United States Presidents, the search engine with only pull up links to safe, good websites, rather than sketchy, inappropriate websites that has questionable material. It helps to marrow their searches and provides a safe environment to do so. Also, if the student wants to look up a highly specific topic, like frogs who are poisonous, who live in South America, and who are the color orange, iCurio will also do that for the student. It encourages students to think outside of the box when it comes to project topics and such. Discovery Ed does almost the exact same thing that iCurio does, except it also shows appropriate pictures, videos, and other engaging, interesting things that kid would enjoy learning about. In some sense, it brings experts into play when the teacher is not an expert in some things! That, in my opinion, is revolutionary.