Applied Learning projects are ventures whereby students connect school work to the real world and direct their own learning. This book describes how to use Applied Learning projects with students in kindergarten through second grade. Chapter 1 of the book describes the characteristics of Applied Learning projects and discusses the place of…

This guide is designed to help teachers use various teacher-directed and student-centered strategies to increase students' involvement in and responsibility for their own learning, focusing on: "Introduction"; "Planning for Instruction" (e.g,. good instructional planning is aligned to course standards, students are actively…

This teaching guide for the Skills for Living course, designed for 7th and 8th grade students in Texas, provides opportunities to explore family relationships and personal development, personal management, and planning for the future. Emphasis is on the importance of the family, effective communication skills, management skills, getting along with…

Leadership education is intended to teach strategies for getting results through others. A Stanford University (California) graduate program for prospective public school principals uses complex problem-based learning projects in which students are required to develop a solution and a mode for presenting it as they would in an actual school…

Describes classroom activities designed to make an elementary class' study of people's contributions to Alberta's (Canada) history more culturally relevant for both the native and non-native students. The activities centered on student research of famous local people of the past. The projects included writing assignments, interviews, and artworks.…

Provides a brief discussion of the possibilities and pitfalls of using video for a research or final project. Outlines some pre-production questions to ask and guidelines to follow in producing a video for academic credit. Discusses technical considerations, content, and issues of confidentiality and ethics. (MJP)

Reports on the impact of an introductory biology course sequence that incorporated experience-based, group learning. Achievement results indicate that students were not disadvantaged by this new approach and, in fact, displayed a superior grasp of group-work, open lab utilization, and creative problem solutions. Attitudes regarding anxiety over…

Describes the work of four Wyoming high school students who created a CD-ROM collection of Oregon Trail documents for use by fourth graders. The students reviewed 60 boxes of diaries, government documents, prints, and artifacts, becoming historians themselves as they created the electronic database. Includes photographs and illustrations. (MJP)

Argues that the preservation of areas like the Shoreline Park (California) wetlands depends on educating students about the value of natural resources. Describes the creation of a Web page on the wetlands for third-grade students by seventh-grade art and ecology students. Outlines the technical process of developing a Web page. (DSK)

Reports on a field project that allowed students to engage in problem solving, gather field data, and apply geographic concepts and tools. Students conducted a topographic survey of a shoreline and classified, counted, and weighed litter collected from the shoreline. Discusses the classification system and the students' findings. (MJP)

Project-based learning (PBL), which is increasingly supported by information technologies (IT), contributes to fostering student-directed scientific inquiry of problems in a real-world setting. This study investigated the integration of PBL in an IT environment into three undergraduate chemistry courses, each including both experimental and…

The introduction of an open-ended MicroWorlds based assignment in a pre-service teaching degree produced interesting results. Students engaged with the task at very high levels and produced work of high quality; so much so that marking trends were reversed. This paper explores the design and implementation of the task and how for many students it…

While most Information Systems (IS) professionals spend much of their time in the implementation or management of projects, the curriculum of university Information Technology (IT) courses does not always reflect this. While most university IT courses cover some aspects of project management, some do not go into this topic in any depth, and many…

This research explored the organizational nature of cohorts with particular focus on the relation between structural factors, including conventions, culture, power, and unintended learning. An in-depth case study of a cohort project team of educational leadership students led to identification of four major themes. Students employed a…

This article describes a method of constructivist pedagogy resembling the quilting process. Inspired by the work of Faith Ringgold, a story quilt was created in two sections of a teacher training social studies methods class. Each class created a story quilt to demonstrate the connection between the power of story, research, and technology--the…