lunchbyteblog

Once of the things that I was trying to accomplish with my last post was to put forth the idea that, often, learning takes place outside the walls of the traditional classroom. In fact, I would argue that in the history of the world a very small percentage of learning has taken place inside a classroom.  Real knowledge comes from real experience and one of the things that we are horrible at manufacturing in schools is reality.  Most of the time, the things that students are supposed to be doing and learning have little obvious connection with the reality of the world outside the confines of the school.  Our reaction to this is the push for PBL. PBL seeks to make learning relevant.  Projects aren't treated as isolated bits of knowledge for students to learn. The projects should be integrated within the framework of the curriculum and should include as many real world experiences as possible. The audience should be bigger than the teacher and the project should includ...

Wow. It's been almost a year since I last posted on this site. Seems like school begins to happen and I lose track of time and space. Every year it happens and then I turn around and I have gone months and months without posting. I won't vow to change that this year. I've been around the block long enough to know all the cliches that go with resolutions and vows. I won't beat a... oh, never mind. I do have something on my mind though. It's been bugging me for a few days and being that I do have a soap box of sorts, I think I'll stand on it for a minute. Last Friday, our school took the whole school on a field trip to the park. Yep, the entire school. To the park. And? It was awesome. Easily the best day of the year so far. Why the park? Why the entire school? What did we hope to accomplish? Let me try and explain. Our school is what is known as a redesigned high school in NC. The General Assembly of NC refers to us as a Cooperative and Innovative high ...