*This tool requires deployment of a website via Github. Our team plans on releasing a hosted version of this tool at a future date.

Most AI tools for teachers are general-purpose: ask a chatbot for a lesson plan and you'll get something that looks reasonable but defaults to lectures, worksheets, and surface-level activities. Tools like Gemini in Google Classroom can generate content, but they have no opinion about pedagogy -- they don't know what makes a project good.

PBL Design Tools is different because the AI is grounded in specific, research-backed frameworks:

• High Quality Project Based Learning (HQPBL) -- Every generated project is evaluated against the six HQPBL criteria: intellectual challenge, authenticity, public product, collaboration, project management, and reflection
• Design Thinking -- Projects follow a structured Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype & Test process, with milestone checkpoints after each phase
• Deeper Learning -- Content targets all six competencies: mastering core content, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, learning to learn, and academic mindsets
• Pedagogical foundations -- The system prompt encodes principles from John Dewey (experiential learning), Paulo Freire (problem-posing education, critical consciousness), bell hooks (engaged pedagogy, brave spaces), and William Doll (post-modern curriculum: richness, recursion, relations, rigor)

The tool enforces these frameworks structurally, not just in prose. The board interface is the Design Thinking process -- teachers fill in empathize, define, ideate, and prototype sections with AI assistance at each step. The AI won't generate traditional lectures or worksheet-based lessons. It insists on student-centered, inquiry-driven, community-connected activities with built-in reflection. And the HQPBL evaluator gives specific, criteria-by-criteria feedback on how to strengthen a project.

The result is a tool where a teacher can go from a rough idea to a complete, standards-aligned, interdisciplinary PBL unit -- with daily lesson plans and agendas -- in a fraction of the time it would take manually, without sacrificing pedagogical quality.

This 4-step assessment map helps educators draw parallels in a new form of assessment through the lens of ecology and research on self-directed learning & a universal design for learning. Then, educators draw out how assessment interfaces with learning, teacher reporting, portfolios, and family & caregiver communication.

This activity is the first step towards unlocking a world of imaginative project ideas for fostering creative thinking and active participation among students. Meant to help “think different”, this kit is a collaborative brainstorming exercise to reimagine what’s possible in the classroom. Using dice rolls, project brainstormers are defined to creative confines that spurs divergent thinking.

Create your own constellation that guides you toward your North Star. Consisting of core values, people, places, hobbies, strengths, assets, and more, your personal constellation tells the story of who you are and why you're doing this work.

My Learning Journey serves as a structured, daily, & modular reflection framework designed to deepen student learning throughout projects or units.

Designed for use with post-it notes or on an online collaboration platform (e.g. Figma, Miro), this visualizer is a simple tool for laying out the elements of elegant systems that work together in clear, concise ways. A slidedeck is included to understand elegant systems design.