My husband has been an electrical engineer and now marketing planner at Hewlett Packard turned Agilent and now Keysite for almost 30 years. They often do service work with the community when asked, and this week they were asked to house a two-week long externship with four Sonoma County teachers who are there to learn all about engineering. These are junior high teachers who are doing project-based learning so that they can go back and teach it.
"What's project-based learning again?" he asked me, suddenly more interested in what it was that I do during the day. He only had about five minutes before he had to be out the door, so I quickly typed up a one-page synopsis of what I thought the high lights were and sent him on his way. It explained the seven essential components of PBL along with my masters thesis theme about a balanced education, and that the workers of tomorrow will need both content and process skills. "The content skills will get them in the door and the process skills will keep them there."
I thought he just needed a cheat sheet to understand the verbiage, but when he got home he said he had projected my outline and all the engineers had read it and discussed it. They all agreed with the "last line" but did not agree that engineers would all need good manners, too. (I had slipped that one in when he told me they were junior high teachers!) It was pretty fun to know that my studies had helped a group of engineers to help a group of teachers and that the word is spreading about project-based learning.
"What's project-based learning again?" he asked me, suddenly more interested in what it was that I do during the day. He only had about five minutes before he had to be out the door, so I quickly typed up a one-page synopsis of what I thought the high lights were and sent him on his way. It explained the seven essential components of PBL along with my masters thesis theme about a balanced education, and that the workers of tomorrow will need both content and process skills. "The content skills will get them in the door and the process skills will keep them there."
I thought he just needed a cheat sheet to understand the verbiage, but when he got home he said he had projected my outline and all the engineers had read it and discussed it. They all agreed with the "last line" but did not agree that engineers would all need good manners, too. (I had slipped that one in when he told me they were junior high teachers!) It was pretty fun to know that my studies had helped a group of engineers to help a group of teachers and that the word is spreading about project-based learning.