is it pbl? why use pbl? 1.2

Many times I have been wondering:

Will this work? 

Is it planned well? 

Will students manage to complete the tasks?

Have they learned?

Pbl in the classroom is a huge task for a teacher. Every help, every resource, every exchange of good  practices is more than welcome. That's why I feel lucky to have enrolled in this course!

the What?

the Why?

By the way, I like dotstorming tool! 

I highlight this entry, written by Marijana Dvorski

what is pbl 1.1

PBL is all about the process and the learning that happens as part of this process. In other words the project is the main course. "Doing projects" however, is often an add-on at the end of a topic that has been studied in class, in other words the learning of curriculum content happens before the project work even starts. The project is then the culmination of that work where the students apply their knowledge or delve deeper into the topic. 

I've watched the first video 3 years ago, when I actually started experimenting in my classroom on pbl.
Millions of problems in the beginning. I don't doubt about the effectiveness of this method but theory is far away from practice in the classroom. I never had and I will probably never have the ideal conditions to implement pbl, but at least I'm trying.
I hope that in the end of this course I will have gained a bit more skills on applying pbl in my lessons.

My teaching context

This is my school, from an unusual perspective, since I wanted to show how close to the beach it's located and let you imagine how rewarding the view from the south classrooms is.









My classroom is nothing special but where I really enjoy teaching is outside, in the garden (I teach agricultural sciences, remember?) or in the school library.

Our school library is a place  where basic technological infrastructure helps us implement projects. It's not perfect but it's a versatile, flexible learning space. That's where my first attempt for project based learning happened and it was when I tried to implement an etwinning project into my teaching course on Human Rights. A tribute to Maurice Medici from Belgium for the inspiration, the ideas and the experience on "Odysseus" project.

It was the first time that we formed teams and collaborated towards a common goal. I had recently followed a 2-days seminar on project based learning and it was the first time that such a teaching practice was introduced to high schools in Greece. All teachers involved were very insecure on what to do and how because we were actually moving out of our comfort zone. Challenging indeed and for me it ended up in a very positive experience.

More about my teaching strategies and their relation with pbl, in my next post!

who I am

That's me, yes!
(Discovery No1, the trading card creator)
I've been teaching for 18+ years and I'm still learning!


My diary during this learning experience is a blog because
1. I love blogging and never have time enough for my other blogs
2. I like labeling my posts, for easy future reference
3. I make a blogging tribute to etwinning, as it was an etwinning project that introduced me into the blogging world (Thank you Jorge Rocha from Portugal, my tutor, in "a trip in space and time"!)
4. I like it!