This week brought me one step closer to what a project based learning really is. I formed my project’s driving question and sub questions and updated my newly created website (Ancient Greek Legacy) with all this new information and ideas. Although it was easy to create my driving question – maybe because I already had a goal in mind – I had a hard time coming up with the sub questions as I had to follow one by one in my mind the steps I would like my students to take.

According to Miller (2011) a quality driving question, encapsulates and explains the project’s goal in a single inquiry. When reading it, both the teacher and the student have a good understanding of the entire project and its objectives. Not only helps to start and focus the research but also helps the teacher in planning the project’s standards and at the same time answers students’ question of “why they are doing this project”. It directs the project’s activities. All of the project’s work, the daily classes and activities, should aim to assist students in answering this driving question.

I believe that my driving question is broad enough and at the same time specific enough to be a good driving question. The students have to investigate how Classical Greece (c. 480-323 B.C.) influenced modern-day western societies. The sub questions clarify and specify things even further, revealing what the students must investigate in order to answer that question. So, students have to research the accomplishments of Classical Greece in various fields, such as science, art, government, sports and athletics. By doing so, they will discover that Classical Greece laid the foundations for the development/growth of all these areas in modern western societies.

This week, I also made a visual project organizer (you can see it on the right), which was really helpful in getting me in the right mindset to start thinking about all of the things that I need to address so that this project can become something that the students would enjoy. I also need to start thinking about the technologies needed to complete it. Some great resources were already listed in this week’s module. From them, I really enjoyed Tricider, a tool that you can use to ask a question and invite friends or colleagues to share their ideas and vote, and AnswerGarden that you can use in real time to get feedback from your audience. Also, I really appreciated all the concept mapping tools, like Bubbl.us, Popplet and Mindamup, Goggle etc. I shouldn’t forget to add in my “Technology Resources” list jamboard and padlet!

Reference
Miller, A. (2015). How to Write Effective Driving Questions for Project-Based Learning. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/pbl-how-to-write-driving-questions-andrew-millerLinks to an external site.