Chapter 9 Reading Response

To find out what students already know about a subject it`s a good idea to take a small poll among the students to see how many of them are familiar with the project.  Next I might do some kind of an activity about the subject that has a little bit of basic information to interest the students but also play on what many of them already know.  I`d like to have them in small groups so they can also use each other as a reference. 

Establishing anchor gives a teacher an idea of where a student started in their knowledge.  They are important because the teacher can monitor how much each student has learned throughout the project and can see if the project has been effective in helping the student gain 21^st century skills.

One way of assessment is to use rubrics to assess the skills students should have used during the project.  I like the idea the English teacher, Mr. Burg, in the book had an assignment to assess how well the students could interpret the literary elements and the significance behind every event in the book Of Mice and Men.  This was helpful to the students because when designing their comic book, the students would have to analyze not just the plot but also all of the symbols and depth to the story and be able to put their view of it as a comic.  I also like the idea to interview students on what they learned throughout the project because it lets the teacher and students talk one on one about what went well for the project, what they learned, and what didn`t work for each student.

I found this chapter to be one of the most influential to our project because assessment is so important in determining not just how much the students have learned but also what the teacher and students can do to have an even more successful outcome for the next project.  

Reading Reflection #9

    To see what your students already know before you do a project, do a small activity that have some information within it to see if they understand it or not. Some of your students may not know anything where other may know bits and parts. By establishing anchors, you gain a sense of where the students are starting and how far they are going as they work to meet the project goals. 

    By establishing anchors, you gain a sense of where the students are starting and how far they are going as they work to meet the project goals. 

    To assess what your students are learning and they are gaining the information there are many things you can do. You can create rubrics, which lie out and give specific guidelines for the students to complete. You could have an online grade book so students can track their progress as they go. There is also just the traditional end of a unit exam. You can also simply have a conversation with your students and they can tell you important concepts they learned. You may have the students create something new that asks them to summarize or synthesize what they have learned. Ask your students to apply what they have learned to a real-world example. Last, you could have your students submit their best work to a competition or enter it for publication.

    Once our students have completely the project they will be having a school wide meeting with students and parents to discuss what has been going on and that the future plans are. Also, throughout the project, students will be making posters and will be given little quizzes over different concepts of the project just to make sure they understand the main points. 

Basic Storyboard for Website

Recycling
Home- Podcast, Concept Map, blog

        explanation of the project describing the goal of it.

What Is Recycling?- reduce, reuse, recycle, 

        clothes/ different items and ways you can reuse things

What Can Be Recycled- Digital Story Chelsea, Jamie Lesson Plan 1,

        list of everyday materials that are recyclable

Benefits of Recycling- saves money

       keeps environment healthy and safe 

      smaller landfills 

      saves resources

Negative- Chelsea lesson plan 1, Sarah digital story

                   how humans are affected by pollution

Details Of The Project- Jamie Digital Story

                   sister city description in project

                Sarah lesson plans 1 and 2

                Jamie lesson plan 2

                 

Taking The Project Home- Chelsea Lesson plan 2

            importance of everyone pitching in

          educating families on recycling

           Community involvement

Reading reflections #8

1. This day and age, branching out and making connections outside the classroom is easy to come by due to the technology available to us. Technology makes it easy for students to share their work and exchange ideas with all types of audiences, family members, peers, classmates, and even local community members! Your students may even find it motivating that others will be reviewing and even replying to their work. It puts a sense of ownership in the students learning. A  really good way to have students share their work is having them create podcasts to share inside and outside the classroom. 

2. The EAST inactive model focuses on students using technology for a real  purpose, to solve problems and make improvements in their communities. The projects students take part in make use of geospacial technologies and multimedia tools that are more commonly found in professional laboratories or design studios. The put these tools to work n community issues that interests them. Tim stephenson was the first person to developed the EAST model at green bier High School. He found that technology really interested the students and it had a big change in their attitudes toward school. 

3. Some reasons to let students "lead" their projects because it shows that the possibilities are endless. If one idea or assignment leads to another idea, then why shouldn't the student be able to take the lead and explore it? There shouldn't be a cap on learning. I do agree that before you are completely comfortable with project based learning, you should stick with having the entire class do a project (that they agree is interesting enough) and when you feel like you've mastered that, slowly begin to allow your students to lead their own projects. You will be amazed!

4. The concepts in this chapter can relate to our projects because we took the lead in our project by choosing something we were interested in. We all had the opportunity to decide what project would be interesting and beneficial to us. We have also had the opportunity to incorporate branching out and making connections outside the classroom when we create the e-pals assignment. I believe that this chapter has explained why some of the assignments we have done within our project are beneficial to ourselves and our future students. 

Reading Reflection #8

    As teachers, we can bring in professionals to talk with our students. The student will gain more by listening and asking an expert questions related to our topics. A good way to branch out beyond the classroom is creating a class blog or website. It is a way for other people across the country and even around the world to look and relate to the project your class is doing.

    The Environmental and Spatial Technologies (EAST) Initiative Model networks of schools have been demonstrating the benefits of using technology to solve problems and make improvements to their communities. The EAST model is built on 4 essential ideas.

1.     Student-driven learning: students need to be responsible for their own learning

2.     Authentic project-based learning: Students should be engaged in solving real problems in their communities.

3.     Technology as a tool: Students need access to the relevant technologies that professionals use to solve real problems.

4.     Collaboration: When students collaborate in teams to pursue authentic projects, they accomplish more than any one person can do in isolation.

  Once you are comfortable with the idea of a project, let the students start taking over. If your project is something they are interested in, they will get their work done. This is a way for you as a teacher to make sure that students really understand that project; if they are able to teach it someone else then they understand. All you have to do is start them off and then let them go, they will take over.

      This chapter can relate to our project. We are going to have a class blog where we can show people what we are going. We are also going to have experts come in a talk to our students. Last, we can let our student’s lead different parts of the project. If they are split into groups, have a group leader, tell them the basic idea of what they have to do then let them figure it out together.

Reading Reflection 8

1.       Some ideas on expanding connections in and outside the classroom are to include experts and also classrooms from other countries.  If a teacher searches the people they know and who their students are connected to, they may find an expert in the field of their project that could put students right in the middle of the project field and get them up to date information.  The students can brainstorm questions before the interview with the expert to prepare them for the meeting.  It`s also a good idea to branch out to other classrooms across the world for information because they can give students insight into their cultures, the lifestyles in the other country, and maybe even provide pen-pals for the students.  This also helps students get the idea that they`re really doing something with the project to learn or help with a real world issue instead of a historical or false scenario. 

2.       The EAST model uses tools in their projects that are used in many professional settings and master them by helping solve community problems.  I thought it was neat that the students at EAST created a documentary about the Japanese American Internment camps since this event has been somewhat forgotten.  A project that uses the professional tools and also has important topics can really impact the students because they can get the word out to their community about the project and educate the community on a topic.  The students can have a huge impact on their community with projects like this.

3.       There are many perks to having students lead the projects.  If the students have been taught the basic background knowledge, they can do research, an important 21^st century skills they should master, and find much of the project information themselves.  Next if they have been taught the basic skills to organize and manage their own projects they can lead themselves and learn how manage their work and find organizational tools that work well for them.  I think it`s most beneficial to students that a teacher just facilitate around the class and be there to set up opportunities for students to learn and gather information.  If a teacher does this, students can learn to monitor their project and know how they work at projects.  In a real work setting an employer is just a facilitator at the most, so if the student is used to the teacher constantly monitoring their work and the student not having to be entirely responsible for remembering everything it will be a big adjustment when that changes in the workplace.

4.       This chapter is very important to our project because we should be thinking about what programs students will use in the workplace so we can see if they will be useful to our project.  I would rather students use technologies they will use for a very long time in the job world than less useful tools.  Also, it is a really good idea to ask the parents and other people in the community if they know any experts in the field we are studying or know of any places that might give students a similar opportunity to learn.  Teachers can also look on local college websites and in the local news to see if any experts or seminars are coming through about the topic of the project so students can get information there as well.  

Reading reflection #7

1. There are three different levels of discussion. The first is teacher to teacher, this method is apart of the planning stage and can include anything from procedural to the formative assessment. A great thing about this level of discussion is that if you don't have the opportunity to meet face to face, your conversation can take place in email or on a shared blog. The second level of discussion is student to student, in this level students should be talking about their learning experiences as they happen, with classmates within their group and among other teams. Its a good idea to explain to them that conversation skills are very important in the business world and even in every day communication. Modeling good conversation to students is crucial for this discussion level to go over successfully. The third and final level of discussion is teacher to students, this includes things such as lecturing in whole group form. This level of discussion is typically found in your traditional classroom but is scarce in the project based learning classroom. In project based learning, you will tend to use whole group discussion every once and a while to shortly introduce a new concept to the children, before the children are sent off to work in their groups. 

2. When "checking in" on students to see how their project is going, it is important to ask the right questions so you can help guide your students in the right direction. Questions also   gives you a good opportunity to get to know your students and their interests. Some procedural questions you can ask are: "Are we staying in schedule?" or "Do we have all the material to complete the project?" These questions will help you monitor the students project and see if they're on task. Make sure to remind your students about the calendar and deadlines that are approaching. Some teamwork questions you can ask are: "How are team members getting along?" or "Is there a student on the team that does more work than others?" These type of questions will give you insight on how things are working within the groups and if their are any issues that need to be addressed in order to finish the project to their best ability. Offer students a safe place to address any concerns, this way disagreements will not cause tension within the group and prevent work from being finished. Its also a great way to find out who's pulling his or her own weight on the project itself. Some understanding questions you can ask are: "Have you thought about...?" or "Have you considered this research?" This are good questions to direct students without entirely telling them the right or wrong answer, because it project learning, the goal is to have your students work to crate something and learn along the way. Some self-assessment questions you can ask are: "How do you think you did on....?" or "What could you have done differently here?" These types of questions over students a chance to reflect on their own work. A good way to have your students do this is to keep a blog or a journal about their project. 

3. When students optimize technology, it opens the door to an astounding learning experience. Technology gives them a chance to communicate with other students there age around the globe. This gives your students such a broad cultural background right from the desks in their very own classroom, who could complain about that! Although technology can benefit learning tremendously, make sure that the technology you are using for the project is just right for your leaning goals, sometimes technology can be more distracting than helpful if you are not careful. 

4. One of the 21st-century skills hat can make or break a project is teamwork. Make sure to pay close attention to team dynamics when in the preparation stage of the project. By detecting trouble, you are able to help students learn to manage their own team conflicts. Having this skill is very useful in the real world. You can also manage teamwork by setting up opportunities at different points of the project for the students to rate the participation of their teammates. Another 21st-centry skill that can make or break a project is troubleshooting. Help students understand from the start that real world projects, have real world challenges. This helps them to be prepared when the project has some bumps along the way before its perfected. Help them to learn from set backs and how mistakes have great potential for learning. 

5. The concepts in this chapter relate to our project because the people in our group have to come together as future teachers to create a successful project for potential students. Just like the students need to work together as a team, us as future teachers need to know how to work together successfully as well. We will also come across some problems when creating this project to help us find out what works and what needs to be changed. Also, it was very helpful to learn about the different types of communication that is in the project based learning classroom and the traditional classroom, it was really helpful to see the two compare side by side. 

Reading Reflection 7

1.       It is extremely important for a teacher to evaluate the discussions in their classroom.  They should ask themselves what the depth is to the questions that are asked and also who is asking them.  If the questions are regurgitated answers that students can answer using only half their brain you might want to come up with more thought provoking answers when planning the lesson.  Also if you`re asking most of the questions you`re working too hard!  If the students aren`t asking questions, they are most likely not interested in the subject and need some spark of interest.  To avoid some confusion and possibly get tips on issues we should talk with our co-workers, especially if we are collaborating with them on a project.  Pay attention to what the students are discussing: Are they explaining their knowledge on the subject so the other students can comprehend as well or are they just giving out answers.  If you choose to join the conversation don`t take over; the students can lead themselves they may just need to be pushed in the right direction conversation wise.  As for student to teacher, I think students should have a large role in discussions since they will learn more being active in the conversation than just listening.

2.       A teacher should check in on projects to make sure students don`t run into unexpected problems and to make sure everything is going as planned.  If the students feel stressed like they don`t have enough a teacher may reconsider their deadline and they should supervise to make sure no one person is doing the majority of the work.  The teacher should ask some probing questions that get deep into the meaning of the objective of the assignment.  Ask yourself, are they really understanding the point you`re trying to get across?  It may be a good idea to use journals or a blog so students can express their thoughts on the project and so you can evaluate how they feel about any aspect of it.

3.       To really maximize what technology can do for a project the teacher shouldn`t think as much about the students learning the technology, but the technology more as an added bonus to your objective.  I think it`s a great idea to consider if the technology is a tool the students can use or a side trip away from the project.  Also, teachers should consider if the students are using the technological resources not just google but also blogs, organizational tools, and contact with real experts and people in the field.  However, the teacher should make sure that those who do not always have access to technology will not be worse for it and should allow for more time on the computers if that is the case.

4.       Some of the most important 21^st century skills are the abilities to look back and fix mistakes, be flexible with the project, and teamwork.  If a student can recognize and fix their mistakes they can improve their work rapidly because they can target their mistakes and devise a plan to make better work.  If the student can be flexible they can mentally be prepared for most loopholes in a plan or project; if their plan of doing things on a computer program can`t happen they will find another way and still be efficient.  Teamwork is extremely important as well because employers will usually want co-workers to work together on some level and building teamwork will only help with that.

5.       This chapter can be really helpful to our project but escpecially in the classroom because it helps define what teachers do in a project based learning environment like what kind of questions to ask and discussions teachers and students should be having.  Also, I really find it useful to consider the use of technology and its purposes towards the project since teachers need to remember that a side lesson on technology that has nothing to do with a project will do students little good.  This is because if the technology lesson isn`t related to a real world situation where students can use it they probably won`t use it in the future.

Reading Reflection #7

      There are 3 levels of classroom discussion. 1. Teacher to Teacher- teachers communicating with one another about how things are going and how they are going to go about a project. 2. Student to Student-students talk to each other about previous knowledge they have of the project. Brainstorm ideas for the project and gain teambuilding experience. 3. Teacher to Student-there are many ways for teachers to go about this level, they can talk to the whole class face-to-face, they could have small group discussions or they could create a class blog and communicate with that students that way.

      There are 4 questions for checking in. 1. Procedural- to track progress toward milestones and deadlines, remind students of the project calendar and monitor student’s project logs and checklists. 2. Teamwork-Circulate and ask questions to help you assess team dynamics. If you have students using a project blog or journal, ask them to write an entry specifically about their team’s progress. Give them a safe place to express concerns or ask for help if they are experiencing team trouble. 3. Understanding- Spend time observing teams at work, listening to students conversations, and asking probing questions. Review online workspaces where you can see student’s work in progress. 4. Self-assessment- To find out what students are thinking about the project, ask questions that encourage self-assessments and reflections. Project journals or blogs offer space for students to describe challenges or frustrations, to ask questions that they may not feel comfortable asking in class, or to share their excitement about a project.

      You may find that students gain benefits that you did not envision at the beginning of the project.  You just have to be careful that the technology is not being distracting for the student’s; you have to make sure that they are using it correctly.

      During project implementation, pay close attention to team dynamics. Teamwork can make or break a project. If you detect trouble, help students’ learn to manage their own team conflicts. It’s a real-life skill that will serve them well for years to come.

Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

      I think out of this chapter, the most helpful concept would be the teamwork making or breaking a project. For most of our project, we have the students working in groups. If they don’t have good teamwork, the whole project could get messed up. This is also where classroom check-ins could come into play. We could set a time at the beginning, middle, and the end of the project for the students to talk about their groups. If there are any problems we can detect them early or solve them when they beginning so we aren’t waiting until the very end when there isn’t a lot we can do about it.