For week 2 we began exploring sample projects and starting to get some ideas on a PBL lesson we could create. Here are my initial reflections, which I also posted in the moodle discussison:
Much like Ashley noted in her post, the biggest similarity I found was that the majority of PBL lessons were for STEM subjects. I was, however, surprised and happy to see that every grade level was covered on many of the sites I visited. I lot of times, when I think about PBL lesesons, they have such complexity and depth that I feel like it would be harder to create them for the younger grades. After reading through a lot of these lessons, I see that this isn't the case. When designed properly, PBL can be an excellent tool for any grade level. I also noticed that a lot of the lessons were cross-disciplinary and, even though they were primarily STEM based, they also incorporated the humanities into the lesson (High Tech High School, for example, has 7 of these types of lessons). And, despite most of these lessons being STEM based, I did find the site Teach21 to have a great collection of non-STEM lessons as well, plus their search system is incredibly easy to use.
After that, I discussed using an "earthquake exploration" PBL in my class, but after thinking about the project longer, I've decided that's not the direction I would like to take. Instead, I want to do something with online safety and digital citizenship. Since I teach computer technology, this is a huge area in my class and something I believe the students need a lot of work with. The ideas are still forming, but I think this is the direction I would like to head!