Project Based Learning and Blogging for Sharing Meaning and Purpose

By mrsdvorakravitz | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

In his Nov. 26, 2013 blog entry, Will Richardson addresses the direction we are going in social networking. Mr. Richardson quotes Kakul Srivastava, where Ms. Srivastava says that corporations as we know them need to change. In her opinion, social networks need to be more than just our immediate contacts. They include people we don’t know very well. It would be useful if we could share meaning, purpose, and fun with these contacts. This could lead to increased contact with people who share the same meaning and purpose for business and livelihood. Richardson states that while we use our PLNs currently to connect and share ideas, it's likely that in the near future we will be leveraging our online contacts as an extension of our workplace, to do our jobs. This is similar to Project Based Learning. When the students engage in PBL, they explore a problem, create a solution, and test the solution.

I’m wondering what steps I can take to make sure that my students have an audience. From the readings we had, I see that teachers make connections and plan the audience. That makes a lot of sense. Since PBL is supposed to have an authentic audience, this provides students with work experience interacting with a customer who needs their problem solving and solutions. While I explore my direction and possible application for my skills as an educator, I also realize how important it is to have an audience. I haven’t succeeded in accessing an audience yet. I created a website, and added blog entries and resources, including teacher tools and access to my lessons that I teach face to face. I decided to create an online journal tracking my journey as an educator. I posted two parts so far, but I have a long way to go to reach an audience. In the meantime, the preparation of a public blog is a great way to clarify my own direction and communicate to myself and others my purpose and meaning as an educator. The next step is to connect with other people who have similar meaning and purpose. 

References: 

1. Boyd, Stowe, “The New Visionaries: Kakul Srivastava”, Gigaom Research: http://research.gigaom.com/2013/11/the-new-visionaries-kakul-srivastava/ 
2. Richardson, Will, From PLNs to PGSDWOPNs, Nov. 26, 2013 at: http://willrichardson.com/