INTRODUCTION
The understanding and use of computers and technology are critical for elementary school pupils.
With respect to science learning, the National Science Education Standards of the United States
emphasize that more efforts should be devoted to creating an environment that promotes understanding of
science concepts, problem-solving skills, and hands-on activities, and students should work individually
or in small groups to explore materials, make observations and discover answers to their questions about
the natural world (National Research Council, 1996).
The project-based learning (PBL) approach has been adopted for over four decades in many
educational settings and studies have demonstrated that students working in a project-based learning
context show improvement in performance and skills compared to students enrolled in traditional classes.
Project-based learning is student directed, connected to the real world, research based, informed by
multiple resources, embedded with knowledge and skills, conducted over time, and concluded with an
end product (Diffily & Sassman, 2002). Project-based learning provides productive environments for
the development of meta-cognition (Downing, Kwong, Chan, Lam, & Downing, 2009). Project-based
learning has five features that help communicate the complexity of innovation in terms that are familiar to
teachers, including driving questions, investigations, artifacts, collaboration and technological tools