Acronyms are defined by Wikipedia as: an abbreviate that consists of the beginning letters of a set of words or phrase. While in school studying education, the jargon of using acronyms begins by teachers learning about mnemonic devices to help our students remember concepts or skills. Education isn’t the only field that uses acronyms, but teachers love them! I love them. I even make up my own randomly to use. There is also a website, Acronym Finder, in case you stumble upon some that you may not know. PBL, SCL, IBL, and the list goes on and on.

Edutopia wrote an article comparing Problem-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning. Based on this article, Project-BL is more broad in topic and how it as achieved. Problem-BL has a very specific problem that it attempts to solve while using more specific steps to achieve it.

I am not going to pretend I didn’t look up ZBL and Edutopia did an article on that one as well.  I love all things undead! I would totally use this in my classroom. In the past I had students complete an activity on how to survive Zombies.

It is even used in the daily communication. Acronyms are a language all their own. I am extremely guilty of using it while secretly hoping no one is judging my intelligence by my text talk.

Honestly, what is it with labels? Why does everything that happens in education have a label? Can’t good teaching be just that, GOOD TEACHING. If my students are engaged, learning, creating, and innovating, then why do I need to label it something? I guess we have to give it a name to describe what we are doing. Therefore, I digress.

When I started Genius Hour and 20% Time in my classroom, I didn’t want to call it either of those names. I wanted it to reflect what I was trying to teach students. I decided on Valiant Ventures. Students would need to brave and get out of their comfort zones to embark on this journey. However, even I use VV when I assign their biweekly reflection.

Does it really matter what acronym I call my teaching?

How teachers go about accomplishing these depends on what works for them and their students. It doesn’t matter what acronym someone teaches. Just make sure it is GREAT TEACHING.