Digiliterate in Project Based Learning

My high school was completely based around the idea of Project Based Learning, which is essentially what we did here for this ebook project.  So, I have had a lot of experience with doing personal projects and team projects in lieu of a traditional curriculum.  Doing project based learning encourages students to be more involved in the learning process.  I also thing the tools that we used to create our ideas (Goodreads, Twitter, Blogging, etc.) were particularly helpful and they really kept me interested in the learning process.  I had a lot more fun learning and I know that I gained more long-term knowledge like this as opposed to learning through the lecture-then-test format.

I think that overall, our ebook project was successful.  I was concerned to begin with that our writing wouldn't have been professional enough, but I am very impressed with how things turned out.  I think we learned a lot about publishing and creating and how we can use free, digital tools to express our ideas.  I was impressed that we were all able to complete two chapters because our class was small.

I think the biggest issue with group project based learning is the division of time.  I feel really bad for the students who dedicated more time to their assigned job.  I don't think students did more work than others because some were lazy.  I just think that the assigned jobs were awkwardly divided and kind of a one-person-only job.  Maybe in the future students could work with an easier publishing tool.  I

I don't feel like the ebook project removed us from the core of literary study.  I believe that instead of consuming literary study, we created our own literary study, which is more awesome.  I know that I am certainly more confident in my writing abilities and by abilities to publish and analyze literature because my work is being published as an ebook.  However, I feel like the focus needs to be more on the literature analyzed instead of a digital medium such as Goodreads.  I feel like we focused too much on what Goodreads and other things were as opposed to incorporating traditional literary elements into our chapters.

I do think that PBL is worth it.  Like any new thing, there are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out.  Overall, I feel as if PBL contributes much more (in lengths and bounds) to a student's overall learning.  Instead of memorizing flash cards, PBL allows students to retain more long-term memory.  I really wish there were more classes that used the PBL approach.