Authentic Projects

What Does It Take for a Project to be “Authentic”?

In his Blog post, "What does it Take for a Project to be Authentic, author John Larmer writes about Project Based Learning (PBL), and give some good insight on how to make sure that the projects we assign kids are "authentic".

I hear the authentic word a lot these days, and it took me a while to figure out that it's the new term for "real life" problems, assignments, or projects. Larmer's article has several good points about what makes a project authentic, and also some tips for how to design you projects to be authentic. He also includes a sliding scale of authenticity to gauge your own projects against.

The middle school I currently teach in uses (or attempts to use, with varying degrees of success) an inquiry-based educational model, so this article and its helpful descriptions and examples will be of much use to me in designing truly authentic projects in the future.