Reflection #1

     As you start on your journey through Project-Based Learning you should know that PBL is a strategy that is powered by contemporary technologies. This means that there are new kinds of learning communities with the internet open to new research opportunities. Digital tools are essential features of the environment that today's students are living and learning. This journey is a learning process for both the students and the teacher.
     Some overall benefits to the PBL approach are that teachers are using technology to open opportunities to reinvent projects so that they become more authentically connected to students lives. We can use these digital tools for inquiry, collaboration, and communication to connect learners to one another or even to beyond the classroom. Teachers also use these new strategies to meet instructional goals and are reflective about wanting to improve their own practices so that all learners will succeed. 
     Some benefits to the students who participate in PBL are: students develop good communication skills to break through cultural misunderstanding and find consensus, students develop good inquiry skills, which foster a sense of wonderment at the differences in the world, students learn to be flexible with their hours because they know other people are relying on them to meet their deadlines, students develop a fuller understanding of how the world works and that it does not just revolve around them, and finally that students achieve the feeling that through communication with and understanding of other people, individuals can do something about changing the world.
     Other things to be considered to this approach is that today's students are up to the challenge, projects are worth the effort, students live and learn in the real world, and that new contexts encourage the projects approach.
     At New Tech High, the project approach is the "cornerstone" of instruction which has spread to a growing network of schools across the "U.S. This is an example of New Tech Model because technology is everywhere but it is not the main focus. Technology is used as a tool rather than the focus of learning. Overall, good ideas are shared and the projects have students in real-world learning that are the centerpieces of instruction.