"When I try to teach with projects, one or two people do projects and the rest just sit around"

I'm pretty stoked about the common core, it offers at least the hope that there will be a drop in content with increased focus on understanding and application over knowledge (at least from what I have seen in the sciences).  We have been talking it up at my school site and I am starting to kick the tires on PBL.  A original concern of mine is that projects tend to look a lot like this commercial with everyone quickly regressing into...well however they see them selves as students.  'Let the smart kids take over' or 'I'm a smart kid and if I don't do this thing nobody will'.  I hear this a lot when I speak with people and it's a legit concern.

I just did a pilot project (4 days) and my main goal was getting students to think critically about efficiency while learning how google docs work.  I wasn't really concerned about doing a good project, because I knew that I would lose some time to the Gdocs stuff anyway.  The project went as well as I could have hoped but my classroom still looked like this commercial.  Here is what the students said.

This kind of inconsistency drives everyone crazy, students, teachers everyone.  Its why students don't really like doing projects.  It has been my experience that most students (at first) would rather sit through lecture and get a worksheet and accept their lot in life.  Even the ones that don't like school tend to complain at first (if they are and have been operating in a culture of traditional school) about how uncomfortable doing things differently is.

My problems is that I gave them an assignment and said "have at it", without providing any direction as to who should do what...and this is a big problem that will always yield the results observed.  It is when I come across projects like this that I really see how this PBL thing can be something so much better.  I love the assignment of group work and the availability of content for each person to research.  This takes time and I went into this project knowing I wasn't going to invest in this idea right. It is nice to know the model for something better is out there.

Ultimately I have to accept that when things go like this, its my fault not theirs.  Having this attitude makes life as a teacher better (although harder) when I am aware of it, and the p power of PBL combined with digital lessons has an appeal that is worth investigating.

What is your experience or observations on the topic of how to structure group work?

Cheers.