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.
I agree that technology makes it easier for connections to be made outside of the classroom. But while this tool is here, it is up to us teachers to integrate them into the classroom and make the best use of them possible. I agree that the EAST model is great for this and prepares students for solving real-life problems with technology, like they'll do in their future jobs.
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned that letting students be in charge of their own project creates endless possibilities. This is so true, because if they just stick to a cut-and-paste project that traditional classrooms are used to, they don't have a lot of room to explore other opportunities.
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