Reading Reflection #5

1)   Before starting a project, the teacher needs to consider the resources available. This includes both material resources and people. The teacher also needs to consider milestones and deadlines. Breaking big projects into smaller pieces makes time management much easier. Team planning must also be considered. The groups should not be set up so that only one student ends up doing all of the work. Finally, an assessment plan needs to be considered. Formative assessment plays a huge role here. 

 2)   According to pages 84 and 85 of our textbook, the teachers management needs include things such as tools for communication, making milestones and deadlines visible to students, getting resources to students, managing work products, structures for a productive learning environment, and assessment tools. Students management needs include tools to help them manage time and work flow, systems for materials, collaboration tools, seeking assistance, ways to get feedback, and ways to see how parts become a whole.

 3)   Some of the technology tools that should be considered for use in a project include a wiki, which is an easily edited webpage, a blog, which has one main author or in the case of this class, a few main authors, and drupal and textpattern, which are both slightly more sophisticated web spaces. Personally, I would feel the most comfortable with using a blog.

4)   In this class, we are using a collaborative blog for our project. By using this blog, our teacher can give us real-time feedback and everyone in this group can access it whenever we need to. We do not have to be at home in order to post on the blog, we can do it from anywhere that has access to the internet which makes it really easy to connect with each other when needed.

Chapter 5

1. The items that should be considered when deciding what materials you need for your students projects and when and how to get them should be the following (taken from pages 76- 78): Will these particular tools help my students learn the content? Is access to the tools equitable (because some students may not have that kind of technology at home)? How will I include experts? Do my students need to be shown how to use this tool? Who else can help with this project? What tools do I need? Where can I get them? How will student responsibilities be divided up? 2. There are a few organizational things that need to be planned even in the most inquiry based classrooms. The first is deadlines/ project management (taken from pages 78- 79) which has the following sub categories: The teacher should have a project calender which is available to the students. The teacher should chunk bigger task into smaller sections. A project calender should be available to the parents. The next organizational item is team planing (taken from page 79- 80) with the sub categories of: The teacher should have different students in each group doing different "group chores" both alone and together. Ensure all students are challenged appropriately. How will the teacher meet special need students accommodations. The last section is to plan for assessment (found on pages 80- 87). When using assessments for a big project teachers should make many benchmark assessments not just at the end to ensure steady growth of the students learning and exploration and to avoid students cramming everything into the last day of the last week. Teachers also need to have several different ways to asses this helps with student who may or may not test accurately in certain ways but really shine through other mediums. How will the teacher help to know what is expected with the assessment? How will the teacher incorporate student reflections. 3. There are many potential tools for doing a collaborative internet project like this one (the ones from the book are mentioned in pages 87- 91). One of the most important things a teacher will need when planning a collaborative project is a tool that links everything together. The books suggest these specific things but if you think of your own that would be great! The book list: wikis, web pages, blogs, drupal, and text pattern. The book also mentions to start with the simplest (most common) technology and then build your way up. 4. As everything begins to take place in our project plans we will need to think about how we will incorporate these items into our lessons. I feel that the answers to questions one and two are very important in this process. Three is also important, but with the onset of new technology every day I feel that things may change a lot as time moves on. Some technology may be better and some may be worse so teachers should make sure to always try new technologies out first before prescribing them to a student project.

Reading Reflection #5

Reading Reflection #5

1. Before starting a project with students there are many things to consider. The items that should be considered are:

-Gathering resources which includes deciding what materials you will need for the project.

-Milestones and Deadlines help with structure of the project. Things like a due dates and managing time fall under this category.

-Team planning determines how the students will be working throughout the project, whether it is individual, with partners, or in small groups.

-Planning for Assessment must be determined when creating a project. A project can have many different kinds of assessments and creating one can be fun.

2. There are important project management tools and strategies for both teachers and students. These needs differ between teachers and students. Students needs include things such as:

-systems and tools that help them with time management, systems that help students manage materials, tools for collaboration, methods for seeking assistance, ways to get and use feedback on their work, and ways to work interactively and see how the parts add up to the whole project. While these strategies are for students, teachers have a different need for project management tools and strategies. These things are: tools for communicating with students, tools for making milestones and events visible for the students and parents, methods for getting resources to students, systems for managing work products, structures that support a productive learning environment, and assessment tools and strategies.

3.There are certain technology applications that should be used for use in a project. I have my own that I think are the best. But according to chapter five in the book, they have certain ones that should be considered. This list is:

-Wiki, which is simple to use and can be shared amongst anyone

-Blogs, which we have created in this class and can be shared and used by many as well.

-Two web spaces are Durpal and Text pattern and these combine content management and a blogging engine.

4. This chapter relates to our subject because we are using technology to produce, communicate, expand, and create our project as a small group. Our project is technology based and these tips are important when creating our project. This chapter helps us expand our knowledge on the technology we are using and can teach us more about technology as well. 

Virtual Penpals

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jp9PGTJlyJhj8DW9FxaOyFZIOz3qMuQ4NmiOxhsU_1Y/edit?usp=sharing

Reading Reflection #4

Reading Reflection #4

1. There are main ideas to focus on when discussing the potential pitfalls in project design. The focuses include:
-making sure that projects are not too long or include too much detail and activity. Simple can be better and those can be the best lessons.
-using research when creating a project can be the best way to learn and create a successful project.
-make sure to have trivial thematic units that will be worth while for the students learning.
-once again, simple is better and making projects complicated and overloaded can be stressful and confusing.

2. There are many features of a good project that are on page 65 in the book.
These features include:
-flexibly designed with the opportunity of different learning paths for students
-usually generative, causing students to construct meaning
-they create a driving question or are otherwise structured for inquiry
-they capture students interested by compelling real-life situations
-they're realistic, they use multiple disciplines
-they reach beyond school to involve others
-tap rich data or primary sources
-collaboration among students in their groups
-students working as inquiring experts
-21st century skills and literacies
-important learning dispositions
-students are hands-on, learn by doing


3. There are many different places that project ideas can come from. The text gives us places where we can find ideas in the book, but we don’t need a book to get ideas. Project ideas can come from teachers, students, news stories, experiences, contemporary issues, project ideas from other classes, and many more.


4. Pages 67-68 in the book give a great outline to design a project. These steps include:
-Revisit the framework 

-make a final list of learning objectives, decide on specifics you want to address, and identify learning dispositions you want to foster.
-Establish evidence of understanding - what would your students know after completing the project, how would they be different as learners and individuals.
-Plan the theme - what would students inquire about, do, create?
-Plan entree into the project experience - what will you do to captivate your students attention, what will keep them interested in the project at hand?

5. Designing a project can be the most fun part of starting a project. This relates to our subject because this is so realistic to our everyday lives as future teachers. We will be creating lesson plans and designing our own projects and we will try to relate back to this subject and many other subjects in some way. 

Kayla's lesson plan

https://w.taskstream.com/Lesson/View/5FED0381AA3F1663D4A24F24721F7037

Here's my lesson plan :)

Reading Reflection #4

1) When working on project design, some of the pitfalls to watch for are long activity, short on learning outcomes (something that's not worth the time that is put into it), technology layered over traditional practice (same old practice but with technology added), trivial thematic units (fall being all apples), and overly scripted with many, many steps (you don't want limited and predictable results).

2) A good project includes different learning paths, are generative, inquiry based, are interesting and realistic, involves others outside of school, primary sources, make students the experts, and have the students learn by being hands on and doing it themselves.


3) Project ideas can come from a tried-and-true project, project plans by others, the news, current issues, students, a classroom irritant, and a great idea mixed with a new tool.


4) When designing a project it is important to start with the big picture like was discussed in chapter 3. Next, you want to decide on what specific skill you want to focus on. You then want to figure out what learning dispositions you want build with the students. After this comes how you will know that the students have succeeded in learning what you want them to learn. Now comes thinking about what the theme will be. Finally, what is the anticipatory set going to be?


5) The designing a project part especially relates to our topic/project because this is exactly what we will be doing every day as teachers when it comes to lesson planning. Everything we do will relate back to this topic in some way or another.

Chapter 4 reflection

1. There are several pitfalls to avoid when designing your own project. Including the following four. 1) A long activity and a short learning outcome (60). : This means that if the learning objectives are "brief" or "simple" and you are having a whole unit on this particular idea then it may be time to rethink your plan. 2) Technology layered over traditional practice (61). : This pretty much means adding technology just because you can. However, when used correctly technology can be a fun/ creative resource to enhance student learning. 3) Trivial thematic units (61). : Means having a unit just because you can without having a higher learning purpose behind it. 4) Overly scripted with many, many steps (61). : This means don't make a unit that is so inflexible that students do not get to make any of their own decisions in the project. This also means do not make it so complicated that students have to follow along and not deviate at all. 2. There are many features of a good project. However, most projects have flexibility. Flexibility allows students to engage what interest them the most. Another important component is emphasis on getting away from the traditional thinking when you design a project. Make sure you engage the learners and step away from "just trying to cover as much material as possible." Because a focus on things like that or "teaching to the test" makes students bored and pushes them away. Along with that according to page 65 in our book all the best projects have the following qualities (which I have rephrased to reflect my understanding of them): - a loose design with different possible paths - let students construct their own meanings - ask motivating/ inquiry questions - capture interest by making it pertinent to real life - make it realistic (and use multiple disciplines) - involve non school people (like parents/ community members) - use primary sources or really good data - have students engage in cooperative learning not competitive learning - have students do what the experts do - acquire and apply 21 century skills and literacies - help/ allow students to acquire learning dispositions - have students learn by doing 3. Project ideas can come from anywhere. However, here are the ones the book mentions: - a tried and true project (65). One that has potential to be meaningful when extended. - a project developed for/ by other teachers (65). - the news (66) - contemporary issues (66). ie. current issues/ events - student questions/ interest (66) - a classroom irritant put to educational use (66). ie. problem solving an issue - a "mash-up" of a good idea and new tools (66) 4. steps to making your own project: 1) Get inspired 2) get an idea 3) revisit framework (67) 4) establish student prior knowledge (68) 5) plan project theme/ challenge (68) 6) plan "attention grabber" (68) 7) make a sketch (69- 70) 8) Make an "assessment map" (71- 73) 9) track resources (74) 10) tweak and enact 5. This chapter relates to our topic because in order to create a project of our own we will need to do each of these steps with our group. Knowing the pitfalls will allow us to work around them, and knowing what we need will help us to acquire everything we need in order to get this project well underway.

Sheryl's lesson plan

https://w.taskstream.com/Lesson/View/C547708A1555AA0A438C3C77DD9A3291 ^ is supposed to be a hyperlink to my lesson (that is being reviewed) you may have to copy and paste it because the links aren't working for me today, sorry guys.

Gardening Google Map

Reading Reflection #3

1)   The big idea for a project is the most important part. Without it, you won’t be able to get very far with your lesson. You need to keep in mind what it is that you want the students to take away from the project. There needs to be a purpose to what you are doing.

2)   The 21^st century skills move beyond the big idea. Rather than focusing specifically on content, the focus shifts to the skills that the students will use and how this will help them in the 21^st century. Analyzing, evaluating, and creating are all considered to be extremely important in regards to this.

3)   The 21^st century literacies help to build and expand on what the children already know. The children should be able to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use the information effectively’ (pg 51 of our textbook).

4)   The 8 essential learning functions listed are:

a.     Ubiquity – Students learn all the time and not just in one place, they can learn everywhere.

b.     Deep Learning – Using raw information to help students build their higher level thinking skills.

c.      Making Things Visible and Discussable – Pictures or visual representations

d.     Expressing Ourselves, Sharing Ideas, Building Community – Helping students to use tools like the internet to help build up their community interest and idea wise.

e.     Collaboration – Working together with others

f.      Research – Allows students to find the information that they need to answer their questions.

g.     Project Management – Balancing their work. Helping them to organize their work will help greatly.

h.     Reflection and Iteration – Thinking back on the work. A blog is a great way to track this.

5)   The concepts in this chapter give a very good breakdown of what we need to look at when we are coming up with our lessons. By looking at each of these parts separately, we should hopefully be able to come up with a very thorough lesson. With all three of our brains working toward the same goal, I believe our gardening lessons will be a success!

Reading Reflection #3

1. “The Big Idea” for any project is important. You always want to make sure the “big idea” will be something that students, or anyone who is learning about it will take from it. This can be a certain subject or topic, a lesson learned, a question, any sort of words with a main idea. 

2. The 21st Century skills are very relevant to PBL. Apply, analyze, evaluate, create, and remember are some of the skills. These are all important skills to have and are key skills for students to develop. These skills develop and and progress over time and some skills are more useful in different subjects such as computers, and some in reading. 

3. The 21st Century literacy skills help with expanding knowledge of important themes, topics, and questions. With PBL, students experience literacy skills in a whole different way. Literacy is used in school with every subject and it is very important to develop these skills in the 21st Century. 

4. There are eight essential learning functions from the book. They include:

-Ubiquity, which is learning in the classroom, but learning in your environment too.

-Deep learning is learning more in depth, investigating knowledge to learn.

-Making things visible and discussable is all about students making representations to show their thinking.

-Expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, building community is all about learning through socially sharing ideas, thoughts, etc.

-Collaboration is teaching and learning with others to expand knowledge.

-Research helps students find the information they need to help them succeed.

-Project management is very key to students success. Planning and organization is the best way to keep work in order.

-Reflection and iteration is reflecting on work completed and analyzing how it went. 

5. Chapter three helped me think about all the skills, functions, and topics to consider when creating our lesson on gardening. These will all be things to look at when developing our project. I learned a few functions to think about from this chapter that I wouldn't of thought of before. Great tips and realizations to incorporate into our own lesson. 

Reflection #3

1. The big idea for a project is what is the number one take away you would like your students to get from a project. You can build other take aways from there, but this is the main idea that is even more important than all of the rest. This is the idea that if the student could only learn one thing from your lesson this is what you would want them to learn. My position is supported by pages 44 and 45 in the textbook.

2 & 3. I see 21st century literacies as a way to obtain 21st century skills. Literacies are like your students "knowledge tools" that they feel profficient with. You need to build these before you can actually develop any skills. In my opinion some of the most important 21st century literacies are technological things like how to use a computer, how to type, how to use word documents, how to use PowerPoint, and how to use the world wide web.

 Once you know your basic literacies you can use this knowledge to learn the skills you will need like how to problem solve, how to work as a team, how to present to others, etc... *The examples given are what I think are important 21st century skills and literacies and might not completely mesh with what the book says. To know what the book author's opinion is on this please visit pages 47, 48, 49, and 51.*

4. Essential learning functions go with my personal definitions of 21st century literacies and skills. These are the functioning that allow children to actually experience what it is like to actually do what real adults do in the real world. The book talks about these skills on pages 45, 54, and 55.

5. This chapter lets us know what we need to think about and incorporate in out own lesson plan unit on gardening (for other groups it's another subject). It also may help us break our thinking into four different subcategories that we can subdivide to make a more detailed thorough project.

reflection #2

1. The book says that the focus of a learning community is to "engage ongoing collaborative problem solving" they specifically state in businesses, however, I feel that because this can be extended to schools as well as the real world I would finish it with something along the lines of: to make whatever group/organization/etc they belong to run smoother (this information can be found on page 30). The book then goes into learning communities when you specify these communities to education/ school based communities. The book says that school educational communities do these three very important things: 1. They ensure that students learn. 2) They create a collaboration for school improvement. 3. They focus on results. (All three of these items can be found on page 32). I feel that although it is good to have results or a goal in mind that educators need to be wary of being goal oriented to some extent because that detracts from the authentic learning that their student's crave.

2. The book also had a lot to say about the benefits of learning communities. The book said that learning communities: decrease teacher isolation, increase commitment to the mission, share responsibility, create more powerful learning, and promote a higher likely hood of systematic change (all of which is listed on page 33). These are all great things that can be accomplished if set up correctly and teachers should definitely be given time to form these connections.

3. Although not directly mentioned in this chapter this discipline benefits teachers by providing a way for them to express themselves as well as gain creative ideas.This also helps teachers not feel alone against all of his or her students. This allows teachers to branch out and do more for their students.

4. Although not mentioned in this chapter project based learning allows students to make connections in many other subjects as well as in the real world. When a math teacher and a government teacher team up to teach about economics it really allows students to see more than one perspective on issues and allows them to see deeper into the subject. This also allows teachers to collaborate better to meet the students needs.

5. The book also proposed what it felt the components of a shared vision were in a learning community. The book said: clear sense of mission, shared vision of conditions that must be in place, people must work together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice, organized into groups with a leader, focus on student learning, people need to be goal/ result oriented, people need to collaborate with one another, people need to have the same values/ beliefs, commitment needs to be made to continuous improvement, and the people must see themselves as life long learners (all on page 35). Even though these are important fundamental goals I do not feel all of them apply in this kind of situation. For example, a religious person and an atheist can work together on projects that are not theology based without much hassle for the most part.Also, I feel that teachers need to not focus so much on being goal or result oriented because when they do that many teachers tend to teach to the test which takes away from meaningful project- based learning.

6. The concept in this chapter reinforces why we need to work in teams to make this project really do well. When putting the elements of a collaborative project into place we learn new ideas and grow into really cool individuals that will be able to help our students grow no mater what.

Reading Reflection #2

1. I like the idea of learning communities. The idea is for teachers to combine ideas with other teachers to gather ideas and share ways to improve lessons, attitudes, tests, etc. Doing this improves teacher relationships and allows teachers to become better. With teacher focus on learning communities, this can improve their students learning by expanding their own knowledge. 

2. I find there are many benefits to learning communities. The biggest one is that there is infinite knowledge that can be passed around from teacher to teacher collaberation. The expansion of ideas and discussions can create a whole knew teaching technique, project, lesson, and much more in the classroom.

3. Learning communities can only affect teachers in a positive way. I'm sure there are many teachers out there who would rather not share their teaching strategies and not receive advice from others, but in the end, that can always help even a little. Learning communities should be looked as a helpful, affective way to enhance a teachers teaching.

4. When teachers are making an effort to expand their knowledge and do more for the benefit of their students, it is going to affect their students in a positive way. Teachers play as a role model and by their collaberation and coming together to learn can be a great influence on students. Sharing and combining thoughts to become better and know more is a great power to have.

5. Some components for shared vision in the learning communities are shared visions from teacher to teacher, collaborate with one another, focus on student learning, share and hold beliefs, commit to ongoing improvement, and expand their own knowledge so they are life-long learners.

6. Working in our groups based around a theme, makes us our own learning community. We are constantly putting our heads together and coming up with ideas. Three minds are better than one in my opinion and the three of us will be able to come up with great ideas to benefit our own students.

Reading Response #2

1)   The focus of learning communities is to build up a collaborative effort between teachers to improve student learning. Teachers are normally isolated in their teaching and learning communities is a way to bring them all together.

2)   One of the largest benefits of learning communities is that teachers are able to give each other critical feedback to improve lesson ideas and see flaws before the lesson is given to students. This allows the lessons to run much smoother.

3)   Learning communities affect teachers by giving them someone else to talk to in order to improve their teaching. These can be colleagues teaching in your school or people teaching across the globe. Learning communities bring people together.

4)   Learning communities affect students by allowing them to get more out of the lesson. They are also able to connect with other students from around the world. Other students can use the data that your students collect and they can use what those students have found in return. Learning becomes collaborative and connected.

5)   A main component for shared visions in the learning community is that teachers work together. The ultimate goal of course is that the students are able to learn. Both the teachers and the students want to be goal oriented. Everyone looks for ways to further improve learning.

6)   The concepts in this chapter connect to our topic because we are acting as the teachers. The three of us are working together and collaborating so that our students are able to get the most from this project. We are bouncing ideas off of each other and are able to give each other feedback. Our students will also hopefully be able to connect to members of the community when they sell what they have grown.