What are the qualities of a teacher who enjoys project-based learning?

Another snippet from my "survival guide" book draft. Your comments are welcome.

If you as a teacher want to enjoy and get the most benefit from project-based learning activities, you will need to:

1. Be comfortable with a loss of control over time, the final product, and “correct” answers. If some parts of the curriculum don’t get “covered,” if conflicting evidence causes confusion, or a controversial solution to a problem is suggested, these teachers roll with the punches. They have the intellectual confidence to handle ambiguity.
   
2. Accept active students rather than passive students. They have developed new rules of behavior that stress student responsibility, and have trained their principals to differentiate between active learning and a classroom out of control.
3. Believe that given enough time, resources, and motivation, all students are capable of high performance. It’s not just the talented and gifted student who can make choices, solve problems creatively, and complete complex tasks. These teachers know that most students rise to the level of performance expected of them, and that great ideas can come from anyone in the class.
   
4. Recognize that your expertise must be in the learning and research process not just in a subject area. No longer are these teachers just information dispensers, but guides for information building students. The happiest teachers are co-learners in the classroom, especially when learning new technology tools. Students get the satisfaction that comes from teaching as well.
5. Understand your personal enthusiasm is more important than ever. The best projects I have seen have always designed by teachers who are enthusiastic about what they are doing and how they are doing it. The downside to this is that it is very difficult to create recipes for or give examples of specific projects that can be easily adopted by other teachers. A project, no matter how well designed, is going to work for every teacher and every group of students.
6. Know that any project may not  always work the first time. But these teachers keep trying.

What would you add?

Do we really need another educational technology blog?

Bill Storm, the Coordinator for Instructional Technology in the Davis (CA) Joint Unified School District, has been a regular commenter on the Blue Skunk blog and his comments are usually more perceptive and well-written than the original post. So I was delighted when he sent me this  e-mail:

Hi Doug,

I’ve thought of doing this for some time, but have not felt terribly compelled since you and (a precious few) others do such amazing work with your blogs, and I figured I could get things said by participating in them.

However, I found myself writing more and more, and saying too much, so it occurred to me that “what the hell, it’s not my fault the world doesn’t really need another ed tech blog.”  I think it was your post about Sir Ken Robinson that tipped me over the brink… so I’ve taken a page out of Larry Cuban’s book and set up Bill Storm on Ed Tech, with the URL being http://billstorm.wordpress.com/.  I really have no idea if it’s going to go anywhere – I suppose that depends on the response – but the focus is going to be the stuff that kind of interests me… changing students, school culture, creativity, best practices, that sort of thing.  It’s kind of skeletal at the moment, but like Dr. Frankenstein, I’m declaring it “alive!”, for better or for worse.

You are cordially invited, though in this week of book writing, you’d best stick to your task.

Best,

Bill Storm

OK, this is probably like recommending a book you haven't actually read based on other books by that author, but I expect good stuff from Bill and I subscribed to his blog which had it excellent first post this morning. It's not exactly like I'm out a lot of money here, right?

I'm going to add my response to Bill here since it may speak to others who are comtempating going public with their ideas. A risky proposition at best for the sturdiest of egos.

Hi Bill,

I have always found writing in the Blue Skunk to be something that forces me organize and clarify my own ideas. Even if I never had a single reader (and I have long since given up on trying to track such information), the blog is still of value. [I forgot to add read Why the Blue Skunk Blog.]

I think we do all like to have an audience for our writing - both from an ego gratification standpoint,  from the helpful and challenging comments that readers post and from the faint hope that we might actually make a difference in the world. Be aware that audiences grow slowly and many bloggers give up too soon.

Bloggers are intellectual bandwidth. There can never be enough! Everyone brings unigue and often stimulating ideas to the flow.

I'm delighted to subscribe and will promote as I can.

Good luck and I look forward to reading!

Doug

A digital version of the Nativity

Pretty cute but don't watch if you are fundamentalist!