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.