PBL: Project, Passion, Play Based Learning

Effective and progressive educators understand and attempt to implement PBL strategies and practices within their learning settings.  What is PBL?  Project-Based Learning? Passion-Based Learning?  Play-Based Learning?  I contend that education, not necessarily schooling, when done “right” is all of these.  How can project-based learning not include elements of passion and play?  Doesn’t play connect one to his or her passions?  Shouldn’t passion-based learning include the development of playful projects?

Project Based Learning

Project Based Learning is an instructional approach built upon authentic learning activities that engage student interest and motivation. These activities are designed to answer a question or solve a problem and generally reflect the types of learning and work people do in the everyday world outside the classroom. (http://pbl-online.org/)

Here is a curated Scoop.It of Project-Based Learning Resources: http://www.scoop.it/t/project-based-learning.

Passion-Based Learning

Today knowledge is everywhere – it’s easily accessible. With a couple clicks of the button, I can find content beyond my ability to absorb it in a lifetime. As a young person today, I can learn anything I want to learn at any time I want to learn it. Therefore, instead of focusing so much of our effort on the content, we really need to focus on helping them learn. We must help students understand how to synthesize and analyze and to create – to think deeply and become passionate learners.

And it’s going to be a different way of thinking when I put the learner first. Instead of me having all these preconceived ideas of what they should doing, saying and producing, I have to be open to what I find in each student. I have to discover – and help each student discover – their talents and interests and create a learning environment where they can use those gifts and passions to learn from a position of strength. Passion-based learning in the 21st century: An interview with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Some resources and blog posts about Passion-Based Learning:

• Nine Tenets of Passion-Based Learning
• 9 Year Old Boy’s Arcade Creation: An Example of Passion-Based Learning
• PBL is Passion-Based Learning: Show Me Your Passion
• Passion-based learning in the 21st century: An interview with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Play-Based Learning

The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others’ emotions and experiences. Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person’s shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success. from CNN’s Want to get your kids into college? Let them play

Play and its related benefits are not just for children. Stuart Brown discusses Why Play is Important, No Matter Your Age is his TED talk.

Resources:

• Why play-based learning?
• Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills
• Einstein May Never Have Used Flashcards, but He Probably Built Forts
• The Pedagogy of Play and the Role of Technology in Learning

Caine and his Arcade have been given a lot of attention and press lately.  Rightfully so.  It is a great example of PBL – Project, Passion, Play Based Learning.  I discuss it in more depth in 9 Year Old Boy’s Arcade Creation: An Example of Passion-Based Learning.

Integrating projects, passions, and play into education in this era of learning has become a moral imperative, in my perspective.  We often ask students to spend 8 or more hours of their day in the pursuit of education.  Through my experiences as a student, I feel that the education system stole time in my life making me do things for which I had no interest, desire, nor use.  As such, I am in a lifelong quest not to do the same to the children who are participating in our current systems.