by John McCarthy | Oct 18, 2014 | curiculum, Differentiated Instruction, Driving_Question, Game-Based Learning, PBL, Pedagogy, Writing
Game ON – How kids want to learn by John McCarthy, Ed.S. This past spring my two teenagers got me involved in playing Clash of Clans. It’s a game played on smart phones and tablets. It’s free, which is a major criteria for my cost-conscious kids,...
by John McCarthy | Jul 21, 2014 | Global Skills, PBL
I credit my middle school Social Studies teacher for my love of History. I often cite one of her projects for how I built deep understanding of the pre-Civil War era and connected the political stratification in the mid-1800s to the challenges of gridlock in...
by John McCarthy | Jun 24, 2014 | PBL, strategies
Day one at PBL World, the educators I’m working with explored designing Project Based Learning units. A major detail, and concern, is identifying a real world audience, and then getting in touch with them. Engineers, mechanics, university professors, authors, or...
by John McCarthy | Mar 13, 2014 | curiculum, PBL, Voice
This post is a companion to a Presentation (handout) at MACUL 2014 by @jmccarthyeds. You can find dialog from that session on Twitter at #OPATHS or go to tagboard.com/opaths/ How can we support constructivist learning in Common Core Environments? Last year at Ardis...
by John McCarthy | Jan 28, 2014 | Concepts, Driving_Question, PBL, strategies
There are coffee tables across the world that–if they could talk–could tell stories about conversations among professionals. One possible scenario are the tables that shared the conversations of such influential thinkers as Lynn Erickson, Grant Wiggins,...
by John McCarthy | Jan 18, 2014 | Differentiated Instruction, Game-Based Learning, PBL, Voice
Last week during the snow days, or rather the Freeze days of -30+ degree weather, my son spent those two days writing and revising a proposal, sharing its content with his peers, and analyzing work by others for critical logic flaws and idea development. The weekend...
