Last week saw Laura, Sally and I head to Sydney for a three day Project Based Learning conference at the Marist College. Marist College hosted the conference because five years ago they began converting to Project Based Learning (PBL). For the past five years they have slowly intergrated PBL into all levels of the college and by next year they will have completely integrated PBL across all subjects and year groups. About 500-600 teachers from around Australia joined the conference to learn more about this relatively new teaching method. Staff from the Buck Institute in America, the leaders in PBL, also attended the conference. It was an extremely thought-provoking, challenging and rewarding three days.
Anyone not sold on PBL before going to the conference, would almost certainly have come away shouting and screaming about how good it is. It was really great to come away feeling, on so many levels, that we are doing the right thing at IFS. It was also great to learn how some of the projects I covered this year could be improved upon for next year. We should always strive to do better. I am really looking forward to next year and improving on what has been a great first year of PBL at IFS.
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