Reading response #3

What should be considered in finding "the Big Idea" for a project?
 Big ideas should relate to real world situations and things that are relevant to the students you are teaching. If students know that their work is important or valuable to not just them but a community it makes the work much more worth while. The Big Idea should be something that is meaningful and a goal you and your students can work towards together. 

21st century skills

• Global awareness
• entrepreneurial and civic literacy 
• health awareness

21st century skills are taught along side normal school subjects such as language arts, math,  science and so on. 

21st Literacies 

Effective use of technology for teaching and learning is known as Information and Communication Technology or ITC. 21st literacy teaches students how to be independent, aware and most impotently productive in the real world. 

Learning dispositions

 Important attitudes, traits, habits and feelings we encourage but it is difficult to teach these things directly. Some examples of these include: self-confidence, curiosity, resourcefulness, cooperation, motivation and courage. These are most accurately taught to students through experiences and encouragement. 

Essential learning functions

• Ubiquity: Learning inside and outside the classroom, and all the time   
• This is more or less the quality of tools that support project based learning. Look for                  tools that help and encourage learning wherever they are, not just in the classroom.

• Deep learning
• Help students find and make sense of raw information, not second hand information discovered by someone else. Instead of the meaning already being made by someone else, the students are given the opportunity to make meaning for themselves. 

• Making things visible and discussable 
• Its important students see visuals, its one thing to explain things to students and have them imagine it but to have them actually see it is priceless. Use tools such as google earth to paint that mental picture of the map and the world for your students.

• Expressing Ourselves, sharing ideas, building community
• Find ways for students to express themselves. Have them determine what they are passionate about and have them create a blog that is all about that one subject. They will have to do research but its meaningful and they would put a lot of work into it because its important to them. Isn't that what we want for all of our students?

• Collaboration-Teaching and learning with others
• This tools encourages students to work together. Its important to know how to work and learn together because its something you need to know how to do in the real world. It also teaches kids how to be respectful and personable with one another. 

• Research
• Its important to show students examples and non examples of good research. They need to understand how to judge the information in front of them and decide if its reliable or even believable. 

• Project management: Planning and organization 
• Helps students manage time, work, feedback, sources, drafts and products. Planning and organization is a big part of the real world and skills students need to have. Another reason why project based learning is a great connection to the real world.

• Reflection and iteration
• Students need to be able to reflect on their work and those of their peers and be able to find things that worked and things that didn't. Then they should be able to take the things they didn't work and successfully work together to find a solution. Again, great strategy to have in the real world. 

How does this relate to our project? 

As a team, my group and I need to know how to work with one another and this chapter really explains the importance of everything you need to work as a successful team. All the points made in the chapter were very helpful and relevant to our group project.