Effective PBL ... and a request for educators to share design ideas for simCEO

Well, summer is upon us and that means the end-of-year chaos has subsided to a point where I can blog again!

Three points I wanted to share with everyone.

1. Yesterday, I was the featured guest on Education-Talk Radio with Larry Jacobs to talk about simCEO.

Below, I've listed a few bullets from the discussion with Larry about PBL that were really interesting to me.

i.) Educational software/environments needs to let students create AND evaluate each other at the same time.  That's what adults do in the real world all the time; we create solutions to problems (problem-solve) while simultaneously:
          a)   evaluating other solutions that others have done in similar situations, and
          b) looking at if our solutions are judged as effective by others

ii) We need software that can bridge the 4 Cs of 21st Century Learning with an authentic purpose for students to learn content.
Collaboration between my classroom and one in Brazil is great for collaboration, but likely not an effective/ efficient way to help students learn content - and unfortunately, "content is king" when it comes to testing (despite what we say about the 4 Cs of 21st Century Learning)

iii)  Entrepreneurship is a 21st Century topic. We need to either provide time to teach it, or harness students' natural desire to learn it by integrating it into traditional subjects. The recent Gallop Education Poll confirms that we're losing student engagement by not tapping into entrepreneurship.

2. I met Larry at the SIIA Conference in San Francisco in May. In case you haven't seen it, SIIA just posted the video from the conference.  Below you can see the simCEO presentation that helped win the Most Innovative Ed Tech Award at the Conference.



3. We are seeking out a few courageous educators who dabble in graphic design to help us in our re-design of the simCEO site. Graphic design experience is helpful but not necessary. Knowledge of successful classroom learning is essential ! We're hoping to get 3-5 educators who can help provide feedback to us and/or contribute their own design ideas. 
If you're interested contact us at info@simceo.org 

I'm getting prepared for the upcoming ISTE Conference in San Antonio next week. Hope to see some of you there.

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