Washington MESA Curriculum Blog

Tips for setting up project-based learning in your classrooms

Six Essentials for PBL
1. Create teams of students (3-4) to work on an in-depth project for three to eight weeks.
2. Introduce a complex entry question that establishes a student’s need to know,
3. Scaffold the project with activities and new information that deepens the work.
4. Calendar the project through plans, drafts, timely benchmarks,
5. Have the teams make presentations to an outside panel of experts drawn from parents and the
community.
6. Provide timely assessments and/or feedback on the projects for content, oral and written communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and other important skills.


Original Source: Edutopia-Project-based learning teaches kids the collaborative and critical-thinking abilities they’ll need to compete
Author: Bob Pearlman

Project-based Learning

Article
Why Teach with Project-Based Learning?: Providing Students With a Well-Rounded Classroom Experience

Project-based learning helps students apply what they learn to real-life experiences and provides an all-around enriching education. Read More

Culture and Neuroscience

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Your brain on culture

The bur­geon­ing field of cul­tural neu­ro­science is find­ing that cul­ture influ­ences brain devel­op­ment, and per­haps vice versa.

When an Amer­i­can thinks about whether he is hon­est, his brain activ­ity looks very dif­fer­ent than when he thinks about whether another per­son is hon­est, even a close rel­a­tive. That’s not true for Chi­nese peo­ple. When a Chi­nese man eval­u­ates whether he is hon­est, his brain activ­ity looks almost iden­ti­cal to when he is think­ing about whether his mother is hon­est.

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Knowmia: A new video platform launched for educators from the flip video cofounder

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Ariel Braun­stein knows a lit­tle some­thing about video. He cofound Pure Dig­i­tal, maker of the pop­u­lar Flip video cam­era, which landed in the hands of mil­lions of consumers.

This time his goal is pro­vid­ing soft­ware to help teach­ers pro­duce effec­tive video lessons and stu­dents dis­cover and learn from them. Read More

Flipped Classrooms

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Read about a new approach in stu­dent engage­ment: What is the flipped classroom?

A reversed teach­ing model that deliv­ers instruc­tion at home through inter­ac­tive, teacher-created videos and moves “home­work” to the classroom. Moving lec­tures out­side of the class­room allows teach­ers to spend more 1:1 time with each stu­dent. Stu­dents have the oppor­tu­nity to ask ques­tions and work through prob­lems with the guid­ance of their teach­ers and the sup­port of their peers — cre­at­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing environment.

California MESA news

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COS MESA Com­mu­nity Col­lege stu­dent selected for NASA program

Col­lege of the Sequoias fresh­man Isis Frausto-Vicencio of Exeter and Dr. Robert Urte­cho, dean of math, sci­ence and engi­neer­ing, appeared today on KSEE (NBC) 24′s ‘Cen­tral Val­ley Today.’ 3/22/12, Col­lege of the Sequoias Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Office

Recruiting disadvantaged youth to succeed

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Edu­ca­tors in Brazil  have embarked on a liberal-arts cur­ricu­lum that includes lan­guage, math­e­mat­ics and sta­tis­tics, human­i­ties and the arts, the nat­ural sci­ences, and the bio­log­i­cal and health sci­ences as an exper­i­ment for recruit­ment and meet­ing the edu­ca­tional needs of an extemely diverse stu­dent population.  They posit that dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents needed to learn more about abstract rea­son­ing, the nat­ural world, quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive research, and other sub­jects they would oth­er­wise never encounter.  Below are two perspectives; an admin­is­tra­tor and a stu­dent  in the program.…..

“These kids haven’t seen great films, they haven’t read great lit­er­a­ture, they don’t speak for­eign lan­guages,” Mr. Kno­bel says. “I think it will open doors and broaden horizons.”

“The most dif­fi­cult thing is adapt­ing to the pace, to the demands, being in class all day long,” says Ms. Vale­ria, recall­ing her first year. “At school we stud­ied five hours a day. We are here from 10 to 6. There’s a lot of read­ing and a lot to take in.”

Link to Full Article:

http://chronicle.com/article/In-Brazil-a-Liberal-Arts/131234/

Tacoma MESA Day

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Tacoma MESA stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents had a fun STEM expe­ri­ence at the Pacific Lutheran Uni­ver­sity this past Tues­day, March 27th. The stu­dents pre­sented their cap­stone projects in Dig­i­tal Media, Engi­neer­ing designs and in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Sev­eral stu­dents also demon­strated their pilot pros­thetic arm devices. Con­grat­u­la­tions and “Well Done” Tacoma MESA staff. https://sites.google.com/a/plu.edu/tacoma-mesa/