Introduction | Curriculum Development | Conclusion

Curriculum Development: Step One | Step Two | Step Three | Step Four | Step Five

Step One: Choose a Topic

Topics for project-based learning should be relevant, engaging, and cross-disciplinary.  Topics should offer the possibility for learning both content and skills.  Remember, this is a different way of thinking about developing a unit.  Instead of starting with a particular content objective, we are looking for a larger issue, question or problem that can incorporate a variety of content objectives and also give students the opportunity to do problem solving and to take responsiblity for thei rown learning.

Local Relevance:  Sometimes the best topics are those that are relevant to the local school division.  For instance, Barry Guillot’s students in New Orleans engaged in a service learning project where they planted marsh grasses.

Online Projects:  It might help to see what kind of projects are already available around which a unit could be constructed.  Here are several portals that offer easy access to listings of online projects.

• Judi Harris’s Virtual Architecture website: http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/  (Check out particularly the telecollaboration and teleresearch links)
• Global SchoolNet is the home of online projects: http://www.globalschoolnet.org/programs/index.html
• CIESE Portal: http://www.k12science.org/currichome.html
• Webquests: http://www.webquests.org
• Blue Web’n Matrix: http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn/contentTable2.cfm

Step Two: Identify Aims, Goals and Objectives