Stuff this week - Project Based Learning
Typically the school day consists of a number of individual lessons such as 9am maths, 10am science etc. The lessons have no relationship with each other and this approach has no relationship with real life. In your work, for any given task, you might use your maths and english knowledge and use your skills of communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. You don't use one skill at a time. Why the disconnect? Regardless of the answer to that question it doesn't have to be this way.
There is an approach collectively known as "Inquiry Based Learning" which allows for students to use a variety of skills to solve a problem or project. It takes on a variety of different names (eg. Project or Problem based learning), due mainly to slightly different focus, but the core idea is of giving students a problem where they need to use a variety of skills to solve.
Sometimes this will involve being given a driving question (eg. What is the weather like on Planet X) which will drive the activities throughout the school day. In science they will learn how to measure various weather parameters, in english they will write the script for the weather report, in art they will build the set for the broadcast and in maths they will work out how long it will take the information to reach earth. The end goal is allowing the students to work out the best way to express a unique, rich answer to the question.
These sorts of projects provide authentic reasons for the kids to work collaboratively. This allows those expensive laptops to be actually put to good use instead of being simply a search engine interface and word processor. Google Docs for example allows multiple editors to work simultaneously on the one document (colour coded cursors show who is doing what) while the teacher monitors all this activity and can provide real time feedback.
These ideas are not new. It is derived from the work of John Dewey and dates back to William Kilpatrick, who first used the term in 1918. The Buck Institute of Education, is the pre-eminent organisation devoted to this approach and they see project-based learning as a broad category which, as long as there is an extended "project" at the heart of it, could take several forms or be a combination of:
- Designing and/or creating a tangible product, performance or event
- Solving a real-world problem (may be simulated or fully authentic)
- Investigating a topic or issue to develop an answer to an open-ended question
There are schools in Australia which use this approach and the NSW Department of Education encourages it. Is your school looking at this approach? A good STEM project is a great start. | 
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