1. All the World’s a Classroom: Project Based Learning for the 21st Century
Kristie Smith, Ph.D.

2. From Shakespeare’s Pen to Our Classrooms
In the 21st century classroom, as Richard Riley (former Secretary of Education) once said, “we are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist … using technologies that haven't been invented … in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.”
Given this task, it is imperative that we pull down the walls of our classrooms to situate our students in real world contexts as we seek to prepare them to lead our world in the 21st century.

3. My PBL Story 7th Grade Language Arts, PBL Teacher (2011-2016)
4 sections ( students)
Gifted and General Ed.
4 teacher team (4 years)
8 teacher super team (1 year)

4. My PBL Journey Team 21 Project Based Learning
21st Century Learning Skills
Adherence to District Instructional Calendar
Common Assessments
Standardized Testing
Accountability Culture

5. ---Buck Institute for Education
PBL
Project Based Learning is a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.
---Buck Institute for Education

6. Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel
21st Century Learning
Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel
4 Question Exercise

7. Q1 What will the world be like twenty or so years from now?
A “smaller” world, more connected by technology and transport
A mounting information and media tidal wave that needs taming
Global economic swings that affect everyone’s jobs and income
The need for global cooperation on environmental challenges
The economic necessity to be globally competitive
More work in diverse teams spanning language, cultures, geographies, and time zones
The need for better ways to manage time, people, resources, and projects

8. Q 2 What skills will your child need in the future you painted?
Learning and Innovation Skills
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Communications and Collaboration
Creativity and Innovation
Digital Literacy Skills
Information Literacy
Media Literacy
Information and Communication Technologies Literacies

9. Q 2 What skills will your child need in the future you painted?
Career and Life Skills
Flexibility and Adaptability
Initiative and Self-Direction
Social and Cross-Cultural Interaction
Productivity and Accountability
Leadership and Responsibility

10. Q3 What were the conditions that made your high-performance learning experiences so powerful?
Very high levels of learning challenge, often coming from internal personal passion
Equally high levels of external caring and personal support---a demanding but loving teacher, a tough but caring coach, or an inspirational learning guide
Full permission to fail---safely, and with encouragement to apply the hard lessons learned from failure to continuing the struggle with the challenge at hand

11. Q 4 What would school be like if it were designed around your answers to Questions 1 through 3?
Teams working together to solve problems and create something new
The integration of technology
Engaging, real-world challenges, problems, and questions
Learning projects
Innovation and creativity

12. Thinking about the 21st Century
The crux of success or failure is to know which core values to hold on to, and which to discard and replace when times change.
(Jared Diamond, Scientist)

13. Thinking about the 21st Century
The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those that cannot read or write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
(Alvin Toffler, American Writer)

14. Thinking about the 21st Century
I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.
(President Barak Obama)

15. Qualities of Project Based Learning
Hands-on
Student-directed
Critical Thinking
Collaboration
Problem Solving
Creating a Product
Performance Based

16. PBL and the Changing Classroom
When students learn by engaging in real-world projects, nearly every aspect of their experience changes. The teacher’s role shifts. He or she is no longer the content expert, doling out information in bite-size pieces.
(from Reinventing Project Based Learning)

17. Student Behavior and PBL
Student behavior also changes. Instead of following the teacher’s lead, learners pursue their own questions to create their own meaning. Even the boundaries of the classroom change.

18. Hallmarks of 21st Century Style PBL
Projects form the centerpiece of the curriculum---not necessarily an add-on or extra at the end of a “real” unit.
Students engage in real-world activities and practice the strategies of authentic disciplines.
Students work collaboratively to solve problems that matter to them.
Technology is integrated as a tool for discovery, collaboration, and communication, taking learners places they couldn’t otherwise go ... Increasingly, teachers collaborate to design and implement projects.

19. Habits of Mind for 21st Century Learners
Strategic and Goal Directed
Formulate plans for learning.
Devise strategies for optimized learning.
Monitor progress toward learning.
Abandon plans and strategies that are ineffective.

20. Habits of Mind for 21st Century Learners
Resourceful and Knowledgeable
Bring considerable prior knowledge to new learning.
Activate prior knowledge to identify, organize, and assimilate new information.
Recognize tools and resources that would help them find, structure, and remember new information.
Transform new information into meaningful, usable knowledge.

21. Habits of Mind for 21st Century Learners
Purposeful and Motivated
Goals with focus
Students learn to set challenging learning goals for themselves.
Students learn to self-monitor so that learning is productive.

22. Can PBL and an Accountability Culture Co-exist?
How do you, as a teacher in a standards based, accountability-focused instructional setting execute a PBL instructional model that uses 21st century learning skills?

23. Common Core
The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.
(from

24. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
Start with the standards. YOU are the CONTENT EXPERT. Use this expertise to craft a PBL model that facilitates your students’ mastery of required district/state/national standards.

25. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
Assessment and hyper-accountability are non-negotiables in today’s educational climate. However, instructional practices are still negotiable. While the tests may be standardized, our students aren’t, and our classrooms don’t have to be either.

26. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
Teach them to think! Rather than teaching to the test, teach your students to exercise real world skills such as critical thinking and deductive reasoning. This way, they can conquer any test.
The goal of education in the 21st century is not simply the mastery of knowledge. It is the mastery of learning. Education should help turn novice learners into expert learners---individuals who know how to learn, who want to learn, and who, in their own highly individualized ways, are well prepared for a lifetime of learning.
(Center for Applied Special Technologies)

27. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
Make it matter in the real world.
Skill obtained apart from thinking is not connected with any sense of purposes for which it is to be used…information severed from thoughtful action is dead.
---John Dewey

28. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
HONOR the PBL Model.
HONOR the Middle School Learner.
HONOR your expertise as a content expert; you have the professional vision to merge PBL pedagogy with content and curriculum and to ensure that your students are assessment ready in the process.

29. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
PBL in a high-accountability setting feels like risky business.
A PBL Teacher’s 6 Word Memoir:
It’s safe to risk-take in learning.
How can we lead our students to take risk in learning if WE never take risks in instruction?

30. Lessons from My Life as a PBL Teacher
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
---John Bronowski
WHAT SHOULD TEACHERS BRING TO THE CLASSROOM IN ORDER TO LEAD THESE KINDS OF LEARNERS?

31. Resources & Links PBL Explained Buck Institute
Edutopia: PBL and Assessment
Partnership for 21st Century Learning

32. Professional Learning Hours Professional Learning Code:PE-72
Session Evaluation
Let us know what you thought of this session. Complete an evaluation electronically on the conference app, or complete the paper evaluation located in the program book.
Professional Learning Hours
Earn professional learning contact hours to maintain your teaching certification. Write down the code for every session you attend on the card located in the program book.
Professional Learning Code:PE-72