Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has observed, "Teaching has been an activity undertaken behind closed doors between moderately consenting participants." PBL promotes lifelong learning because

PBL and the use of technology enable students, teachers, and administrators to reach out beyond the school building.
Students become engaged builders of a new knowledge base and become active, lifelong learners.
PBL teaches children to take control of their learning, the first step as lifelong learners.
In that pursuit of new knowledge, technology allows students access to research and experts, from such sources as first-person accounts to movies of the Civil War found on the Library of Congress's American Memory collection to online chats with NASA astronauts.