Last week, we asked our social media followers to share their favorite resources for project-based learning. We got nearly two dozen responses from PBL advocates in our network.

Leading the mentions were online resources from Buck Institute for Education and Edutopia, along with their related Twitter ed chats. 

Contest winner Chris Beyerle, new tech district extension coach for Greenville County Schools in Greenville, South Carolina, recommended the website PBLU. He said it’s his top pick because it includes exemplar PBL projects right on the landing page and is sponsored by reputable sources — Buck Institute for Education and the New York Hall of Science.

“What I like best about this resource is that the projects embrace the true elements of PBL, including relevant cross-discipline connections, promoting inquiry student voice and choice reflection, public audience Common Core standards, and other 21st century skills,” Beyerle said. “After implementing one of these recommended exemplar projects, teachers will find they provide a nice roadmap to further the impact of learning outside the walls of their classrooms.”

Community members recommended a number of other PBL sites as well, including Intel’s Engage community, the Microsoft Educator Network, High Tech High and the Buck Institute’s PBLU. Leaders among the Twitter chat suggestions were #ElemMathChat, #COLchat, #tlap, #weirdEd and #eduality.

Other respondents recommended crowdsourcing ideas from colleagues, parents and community members. They also mentioned a couple of books, including Project-Based Learning Tasks for Common Core State Standards and Year Round Project-Based Activities for STEM.

The list also included the Tech2Learn PBL wiki, Audacity audio editing software, LilyPad’s e-textile components and Antioch University’s Critical Skills Program. 

Suzie Boss, who co-authored Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age with Jane Krauss, is a fan of Edutopia’s PBL videos, which take viewers right into classrooms to see real projects happening.

Krauss explains that the best PBL resources create a bridge from research to practice and show how validated practices are expressed in the field. Krauss also likes Edutopia, along with edcamp and #PBLchat, a Twitter meetup hosted by the New Tech Network that operates in real time every Tuesday evening and is a standing hashtag used to filter all aspects of PBL.

“They do a good job of moderating and keeping everybody coming along,” Krauss said. “And some of the most honored names in PBL show up there.”