Traditional education is failing to engage many students as they enter their middle school, high school, and college years. The culture clash between formal education and interest-driven, out-of-school learning is escalating in today’s world where social communication and interactive content is always at our fingertips. We need to harness these new technologies for learning rather than distraction.

Young people learn best when actively engaged, creating, and solving problems they care about, and supported by peers who appreciate and recognize their accomplishments.

“When am I ever going to use this stuff in real life?”

With project based learning, the content is baked inside of a long-term project, a real-world problem students need to solve in a creative and authentic way. In the process of solving the problem, students also meet required standards, but this work is integrated into the project, not separate from it.

Careful, though: The “project” in many cases is often something like a poster that merely regurgitates the facts students were taught in the unit.

How will we know if stu-dents have achieved the desired results? What will we accept as evidence of stu-dent understanding and their ability to use (transfer) their learning in new situations? How will we evaluate student performance in fair and consistent ways?

What should students know, understand, and be able to do? What is the ultimate transfer we seek as a result of this unit? What enduring under-standings are desired? What essential questions will be explored in-depth and provide focus to all learning?

s. The teacher as designer is similarly constrained. We are not free to teach any topic we choose. Rather, we are guided by national, state, district, or institutional standards that specify what students should know and be able to

ts learn and understand the desired knowledg

To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you're going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direc

But it is the process of students' learning and the depth of their cognitive engagement— rather than the resulting product—that distinguishes projects from busywork.