Reflection5

Before starting any project with students, teachers should consider these items before starting projects with their learners: • Background information about the learners, resources, and what the learners needs. • Project must have deadline then the students will work stimulate to finish their work. • Students must be organized in which way they should work such as working in team or individual. • Students’ performance assessment. • Giving Feedback. In fact, students and teachers have a project management needs that provide them with a specific strategies for the project. First of all, students’ projects management needs are: • System and tools provide help to manage the project time. • System helps them to control their work. • Tools provide collaboration. • Strategies that assist students work. • Feedback and teachers advice, which help the students to improve. Second, teachers’ management needs are: • Tools help the teachers to communicate with their students. • Tools that help the teachers to get resources for the students. • System helps of managing the teachers work. There are some technology tools can provide help for the teachers and students by organizing their work. The tools might be: • Blog • Google Doc • Flicker • RSS • ClustrMap In conclusion, reading this chapter give me a perfect ideas of how to design and do project. Also, it also give me a clear concept of how I can take care of my students need.

Chapter 5 Reflection: Project Management Strategies for Teachers & Learners

1. There are many things that should be considered before starting a project with students. It's important to figure out what materials are needed for the project at hand and figure out whether or not those materials are accessible. Remember, the community is a great place to look for outside help if the materials aren't accessible in school. Whether the students will need technology for their project is also very important to make note of before starting. Lastly, figure out if students will need to access experts to answer questions in the project and figure out how you will work that out. Will they meet face to face to collaborate or will it be through the use of technology for distance reasons. Overall make sure you make best use of your time and the students' time when starting a project.

2. In any project teaching students to be managers of their own time should be a primary goal to reach because having this skill helps them not only throughout their education but even further.  Project management needs for teachers include tools for communicating with students and others about the project. By using this tool they can create milestones for students which help them stay on task and get chunks of their project done on time. This also shows them when changes in the information on the project have changed. Teachers can also use project management for methods for getting resources to students, using systems for managing work products, a way to engage students and ensure they're productive, and use assessment tools and strategies. As for the students project management needs they use a variety of different collaboration tools, a way of seeking methods of assistance, ways to get feedback on their work whether that's from other students or the teacher.

3. There is a variety of different technology applications that can be considered for the use of a project. In the text they mention Wiki, Drupal & Textpattern, and blogs. Wiki can be used to collaborate and write/edit together from anywhere and learn as information on their project changes. The use of a blog is less of a free for all than Wiki. And Drupal and Texpattern is more sophisticated. Students can also create their own website for their project as well.

4. This chapter relates to our topic/project because we too are using a type of technology to collaborate and learn. In our project we are using Blogger to post concept maps, reflections, and more about Staying Healthy. This technology application is useful because it's accessible anywhere and we can post and edit when others in our group are as well.

Reflection 4

Engaging the students in the learning process might be hard but it is impossible if you know the how to do it. Sometimes confusing can be the best idea to make the students work further to find the best solutions. However, if the confusion give the students a wrong impression, the teachers might have done more damages. There are a few potential pitfall you might noticed in your classroom and you must avoid to do as a teacher:

·      *   Long on activity and short on learning outcomes.

·      *   Technology layered over traditional practice.

·      *   Trivial thematic units

·       *  Scripted with many steps.

As a teacher, you must turn your classroom effectively by providing the students with the best sources to have a successful project. Project should have some important features, then you can call it “Best Project”. Project should help the students to understand different learning path that constructs the students’ critical thinking. Moreover, effective project must have a driving question that captured the students’ attention. As a result because the projects is realistic, it might help the students to understand the core meaning of the subjects. Also, project should be organized, which helps the students to understand the project and explain to each other. Also, teachers must have the students to learn by doing and practice the project. Finally, students need to cooperate and use technology in order to understand the project.

If you a good plan, you will have a successful project. As a result, one successful project, led you to have another successful project. The author presented some examples that shows where the project idea come from. Suzi and Jane provided some example about project “News stories, contemporary issues, students’ questions or interests, a classroom irritant put to educational use and a mashup of a great idea and new tool.” However, the project need to be design and there are some steps to design the project:

·        * Having a final list of the learning objective.

·        * Finding out the evidence of understanding the project.

·        * What the students need to do for creating the project.

·       *  How to get the students attention.

In conclusion, this chapter provide me with a great ideas that help me of having my students’ attention. Moreover, it provides me with of how I can make the project work effectively in my classroom. As a teacher, I would follow the writers instructions in order to have a great project.  

Assignment #4

Our students are third graders that are right here in Michigan! Because we have the Great Lakes to help supply most of our water, we never have to want for water. The students want to learn more about other areas that do not have the luxury of the Great Lakes. So the students will communicate with other students in Phoenix, Arizona at Sunrise Elementary school. First, we will gather information about the area and find similarities and differences. We will talk about water and why it is important to our health and figure out what the benefits are to having unlimited water usage. what other things do we do with water here and are they different from the students in Arizona? As a whole group, the student can come up with questions they think are important to learn about from their friends in Arizona. After communicating with the other students, we can make comparison charts to show the differences and similarities from each area. Then groups can make posters based on the similarities, differences, information learned from research, and samples of their letters.

Reflection #4

1. Discuss the potential pitfalls in project design.
• try not to make projects long or busy
• make sure projects uses significant research to have the best results for learning
• thematic units are not always the best for projects, make sure it is worth while for the students' learning
• make sure students are not overthinking their projects
2. Discuss the features of a good project.
• loosely designed
• generative
• centered on driving questions
• realistic
• reach beyond school
• have rich data
• HAVE STUDENTS LEARN BY DOING
3. Discuss where project ideas come from.
• students' questions
• classroom irritant put to educational use
• contemporary issues
• new stories
• project plans developed by other teachers
4. Discuss the steps to design a project.
• revisit the framework
• look at learning objectives
• what 21st century skills needed or wanted
• learning dispositions wanted for students
• Establish evidence of understanding
• what do the students know or what information can they find
• plan the theme or challenge
• what would the students inquire about, do, and create.
• plan entree into the project
• what will get the students excited about?
5. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.
• our project is for the students and is created to help students learn about being healthy in their everyday lives. I feel that our project has potential to have the students asking questions and learning beyond.

Chapter 4 Reflection: Strategies for Discovery

1. There are many potential pitfalls in project design, in fact the text mentions four of them (p. 60-61). 

• Having a long activity, may have a short on learning outcomes. For example, if students can learn just as much through a small lecture on the topic, then the project idea may fall short.
• Having technology layered over traditional practice. Creating a great projects is more than just researching information on the Internet and regurgitating it into a presentation. Students need to work on projects that have significant learning outcomes for themselves. 
• Having trivial thematic units. It's important as teachers to find ways that a theme elevates and connects students learning. In the text they use the example of the symbol of apples used in learning during the fall. Some teachers will use them to paint and count, where as some teachers structure the idea differently and use apples to teach children about commerce, agriculture, and transportation. 
• Having overly scripted with many, many steps. This leads to limited and predictable results, or even project that are much too complicated. It's important that teachers look into the learning objectives and student outcomes of projects before committing to it. 

2. The features of a good project include the following(p.65):

• 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. Project ideas can come from a variety of different places. They can come from teachers, news stories, real-life situations, students, Internet, the list goes on. The text also gives us places where we can find ideas in books. 

4. According to the text the steps to design a project include the following (p.67-68):

1. 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.
2. Establish evidence of understanding - what would your students know after completing the project, how would they be different as learners and individuals. 
3. Plan the theme - what would students inquire about, do, create?
4. 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. Concepts in this chapter relate to our topic because together we are finding ways that will capture students interests by creating a health fair. With different hands on activities in each place of the fair students will have the opportunity to learn by doing and observing. As for the classroom students will be working in groups to collaborate ideas on staying healthy.In creating these lesson plans, my group will work collaboratively to create beneficial ideas. 

Chapter 3 Reflection: Imagining the Possibilities

1. When considering the "big idea" for any project it's important that students will be able to learn something from it. Finding ideas that capture their attention may get them more engage in the big idea at hand. This can be done by using idea that are based off real life things. Using collaboration among colleagues may be important for the teacher as well to bounce ideas between each other on key points of the big idea before assigning it to students.

2. The 21st century skills are based off five things which include, analyzing, evaluating, and creating based off Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. These are a high-order of objects rather than lower-order of objectives. Without using this skills the big idea of a project may not go as far as the teacher thought it might.

3. As for the 21st century literacies they go in hand with skills. But literacies goes far past just the ability for read and write according to the text. Literacy in the 21st century is simply learning to be independent, aware, and productive. "What students can learn from this is how to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts (p.49)".This allows students to get a sense of the world and for educators to accomplish their educational goals.

4. The essential learning functions contains eight parts. 1) Ubiquity: Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom, and All the Time - tools that help students become more mobile and learn on the go. 2) Deep Learning - go beyond "filtered" information and use higher-order thinking to engage students. 3) Making Things Visible and Discussable - showing rather than telling, allow students to see the big picture. 4) Expressing Ourselves, Sharing Ideas, Building Community - turn information mediums into social mediums for example Facebook. 5) Collaboration-Teaching and Learning with Others - learn together, plan together. 6) Research - using the web for research and citation help. 7) Project Management: Planning and Organization - helps students manage time, work, sources, feedback from others, drafts, and products during projects. 8) Reflection and Iteration - examine ideas from multiple point of view. Edit if needed.

5. After reading this chapter I know we can use the essential learning functions for a way of organizing and expanding our thoughts on staying healthy. We can use collaboration through making things visible and discussable, expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, and building a community among our groups, collaborating, and project management.

Reflection #3: Imagining the Possibilities

Why We Use a Wiki

• web resource
• users can add and edit content
• useful for planning projects
• ease of use and accessibility - helpful too

When creating a project, we need to facilitate what is needed in the 21st-century skills. these terms will later help create questions that help students improving their skills!

• Analyze:examine, explain, investigate, characterize, classify, compare, deduce, differentiate, discriminate, illustrate, prioritize
• Evaluate: judge, select, decide, justify, verify, improve, defend, debate, convince, recommend, assess
• Create: adapt, anticipate, combine, compose, invent, design, imagine, propose, theorize, formulate

Essential Learning Functions

• Ubiquity: learning inside and outside the classroom, and all the time
• deep learning
• making things visible and discussable
• expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, building community
• collaboration
• research
• project management- planning and organizing
• reflection and iteration

When keeping all these things in mind, we can successfully lead our students in the right way to a project that means something to them and have them learn along the way. It is important to keep the students interested and have them learn through the research. Suggest questions in order to help plan and organize their work and also help share ideas to help build a better project! The use of Wiki can help build a community for the students to share ideas or information. Also, the Wiki can be used outside and inside the classroom to make it easier for the students.

Reflection:Chapter 3

Essentially, wiki is a web page consider as an open- editing system. The tools in wiki are collaborated to provide the most effective system to the instructors and the students. Usually in the classroom, instructors provide the students with courses content. However, when the learners deal with wiki, they will have the chance to create more of the course content. To illustrate, students move from the consumer of the rules and the facts to the creators of the knowledge due to the using of wiki. As a teachers, I help my learners to develop their critical thinking skills, learn from different sources, and improve their ability of working as a group.

As an instructor, since wiki is perfect for group projects, which emphasize editing and collaboration works, I would prefer my students to use it in:

• Using wiki for doing research project.
• Summarized and critiqued about what the students read.
• Compiling knowledge related to the course concept.
• Maintaining the relationship where the students and the teachers can comments, post and classify links related to the course subject.
• Online course repository is built where the students and teachers are able to post a relevant documents.
• E-portfolios can be created of the students’ works.

My other thought of wiki would be in business. In fact, to run your business more effectively, I suggest you to use wiki. Due to the flexibility part of wiki, there are some reasons why you should use wiki in your business:

• Managing projects.

Wiki can provide you with some tools that organize client data, files, and task lists.

• Archiving files.

Common use of wiki in the business are is wiki can be repository for the files, meeting notes, events information, calendar and everything can be related to the business. As a result, you will have one database that can be easy accessible by the business staff.

• Support.

Wiki can be used as an open or closed source.

• Collaboration.

Wiki can be a place that develop and support that ideas, where can all the authors publish, discuss and collaborate as a group.

• Notebook.

For your individual needs, you can use wiki as your workspace that you can brainstorm, generate knowledge, collect link and make your own lists.

     There are some amazing benefits of using wiki:

• Wiki is white sheet of paper, where you can write, arrange, edit, format, you can organize in the way you like.
• Easy to use.
• Wiki can be a central place for all the important information and data related to your work.
• Wiki promotes collaboration.
• Wiki reduces version issues.
• Wiki is for free or if you decide to enjoy more features of wiki, you can get them for a very low cost. 

Chapter 2 Reflection

A professional learning community has become a familiar term in the education society. The purpose of professional learning community is collegial work that has same commitment. The advantages of professional learning community is the member of the group they don’t have to be in same area. The group, who are working together in professional learning community, they are coming from different regions, schools, background. Furthermore, they might be engaging in a variety of activities such as sharing a vision, working and learning collaboratively, observing a classrooms, and visiting a classrooms. Also, the members of the group might be participating in making decisions.

Benefits of Professional Learning Community:

·         Reducing isolation of teachers.

·         Teachers are more informed and committed.

·         Students gain more academic information.

·         Collaboration.

·         Removing barriers of success.

·         Focus of having a great result.            

GPS, EarthCache

United State Department of Defense placed a set of satellites into the orbit, which

is called a (GPS). In fact, the Global Positioning System (GPS) is based on navigation

system that includes 24 network satellites. The reason why United State Department of

Defense developed this innovation is because of the military used. In 1980s, the U.S. 

government makes (GPS) available to use by the civilian. The most amazing thing is

(GPS) works in any weather conditions. Further, we can use it wherever we go and it

works 24 hours a day. On the other hand, high speed internet is required and we can use

the (GPS) for free. There is a huge usage of GPS by some educational website such as

EarthCache.    

World is interesting. Traveling become a passion for some people because of the

fact that world has to many precious area to know. Usually, it is hard to travel especially

if the purpose of traveling is to discover a geological feature of our planet. However,

EarthCache make this job more easy and possible for the people who seek this

knowledge. EarthCache is a special website cares about the unique feature of the earth.

Furthermore, it includes a set of educational notes, which are along with coordinates. The

most amazing and interesting part about the EarthCache is the people can see how the our

planet has been shaped by the time beside the geological effects. In fact, GPS is a

widespread usage by the EarthCache. Most of the EarthCache websites must have some

scientific knowledge about the website itself due to the fact that they meant to be for an

educational purposes. Also, the Geological Society of America (GSA) has to oversight

and approve the EarthCache sites, which make them reliable to use.