Project Based Learning

In this edutopia video I really took away how much more a person can take away and learn from an expericence when it is something that they enjoy. With project based learning, these programs provide students an opportunity to learn about what interests them instead of being fed the same knowledge from textbooks over and over again. The kids become emotional invested in these projects and in the video you could really see them striving to learn more and more. That is not what you typically see in a classroom setting. These kids were excited about learning. I think the most important thing to take away is that when you are doing something that you love you automatically do a better job and are more passionate about it.

I connect with this video because I remember when I was in school and I always loved to write. However most of the topics we were given were boring or state test driven. Then my teacher assigned a research paper and told us we could pick any topic we wanted as long as she approved it. I was very interested in the Blood Diamond trade in Africa at the time an that became my topic. I researched so much information for that paper and I ended up exceeding the page limit by a lot. This was all because I was passionate about the project and it was something I was interested in just like the kids in the video.

As a future educator, this really opened my eyes to the importance of project based learning. This type of learning can really help kids and give them a direction in their life by seeing this is what I love and this is what I can do with it. I think most importantly of all is the future implications that project based learning has. When given a project that they can work on and they are passionate about in real world terms the kids can see that maybe they can make a career out of this or maybe this is the direction of study I want to take in college. This type of learning is very direction oriented and in the long run the kids learn more. I am a supporter of this type of learning and I hope in my classroom I can implement this as much as possible.