Today we’re speaking about John’s book Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning. There are three main sections to today’s interview. An overview of project based learning, a bit of a deeper dive into what PBL looks like, and a bit of a discussion about the research around PBL and student achievement. I will note that unfortunately John had somewhere else to be at the end of our discussion, so we only had an hour to explore these issues. What this means is that I wasn’t able to ask quite as many questions digging into detail as I usually would. There were numerous times within this interview, such as when discussing the measurement of 21st century skills, or when John was talking about designing driving questions for projects, that I would have loved to ask many many more questions to dig into detail but unfortunately there just wasn’t the time.
As a consolation, this is actually part of a two podcast mini-series on PBL and next month you’ll be hearing Janet Kolodner and I speak for about two and a half hours about a specific instantiation of PBL, Project Based Inquiry Science, during which I gratefully did have the time to really drill down into details.
So I hope that you find this discussion with John Larmer a good grounding in PBL Works’ understanding of what makes Gold Standard PBL, and this episode is a fantastic lead in to next months episode too.
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John Larmer is editor in chief at PBLWorks, having also served as director of product development and associate director since joining the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) in 2001.
John writes and edits PBLWorks' PBL Blog and other website content. He co-authored and/or edited BIE’s project-based curriculum units for high school government and economics, the Project Based Learning Handbook (2003), and a series of books in PBL Toolkit Series. He contributes to the creation of PBLWorks' professional development services and PBL materials, including the PBL 101 workshop and rubrics for 21st century success skills. John has also consulted on PBL curriculum development for the National Academy Foundation, the Oracle Education Foundation, and Pearson Education.
Previously, John has been a consultant to middle and high school on the use of standards and assessment started out as a high school social studies and Englis theacher, and has even co-founded a small high school, in his time.
Links/resources mentioned in the show
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