I’ve heard a lot of teachers talk about how important “authentic tasks” are to real learning.  This is often lumped in with project-based learning, but this morning an article in the New York Times drove home for me the difference between the two.

Project-based learning, a beautiful thing in its own respect, requires active participation on the part of the learner, challenges the learner in new ways, often requires teamwork and outside materials, and generally evaluates student learning in a more complete way than the more traditional, multiple choice exams.

Authentic tasks can be the same, but not necessarily.  Cornelia Dean writes about “When Science Suddenly Mattered,” the time when America entered the space race and, consequently, educators began treating science as relevant and engaging.  No one made it a law, no one set down the rule, but the teachers knew this was suddenly important, they brought in the news, and the students jumped onboard.

Amazing what students can learn when we let them!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 5:19 am by Marli and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.