Friday, February 10, 2012

Carrie Brown - Reading Reflection #3


1.       1. There are many things that should be considered in finding the “Big Idea” for a project. Reviewing teaching guides and curriculum standards are very important and they should be done first. From there, it is great to get families of the students involved, as well as members of the community. Students can use technology in these projects to help them advocate for their proposed solutions. This is a great way for them to prepare for real life situations. 2. In order for students to stretch their intellectual muscles, they need to be involved with types of projects that they aren’t familiar with. For this to happen, these projects need to be well designed and nontraditional. One way to do this is to use Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. These are: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The ones most important to PBL are analyzing, evaluating, and creating. 3. As defined by UNESCO, literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. 21st century literacies recently changed focus to the behaviors required of accomplished people. A true-to-life project involves opportunities for learners to become literate in the 21st century sense of the word. 4. There are eight essential learning functions. Ubiquity is the quality of tools that support project learning. Deep learning is going beyond filtered information and helping students find and make sense of raw information on the web. Making things visible and discussable is about using digital tools to do things that otherwise would be hard to do. Expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, and building community discusses using the web to express ourselves and for personal interaction. Collaboration involves using different tools to let people meet and interact. Research is used to help students answer questions that students may have. Project management helps students manage time, work, sources, feedback from others, drafts, and products during projects. Reflection is used to get a better idea of what was learned during the project. 5. The “Big Idea” and the eight essential learning functions will both be used during our project.  They will both help students better understand how to use technology for a variety of things.

5 comments:

  1. This is a good summary of the chapter. It is key to remember that when conducting a project, we must keep our students in mind. What will they be interested in? why should they care about the subject? how does it relate to them? is there passion in the project? Projects with passion help connect the social and emotional sides of the learning experience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great reflection! I really liked how you emphasized the application of the real-world to these projects, as well as how important it is to get the community involved. It was also a good point when you said it was important for students to get involved in projects they aren't familiar with. I also liked your summary of the eight essential learning functions. It was concise and accurate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I really like your idea of thinking outside of the box and using nontraditional ways of teaching. Students are not learning through worksheets and spelling tests anymore. By relating it to real-life events and things that they are interested in, their education suddenly becomes important and worthwhile to them. This is such a great point to remember as we start to enter the teaching field. To be a successful teacher, we have to have our students' interest in what we are presenting and then let them run with it and create!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like this reflection and how you mentioned getting family members and people of the community involved. When the outside community gets involved, it puts a bigger emphasis and meaning to what the students are working on. They are able to connect with real-life situations and scenarios. I also agree that using Blooms Taxonomy is a great way to get projects started and going. Using this, helps make the project interesting and unusual.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I liked the how you commented on the main ideas captured in this reflection. One thing in particular was that you liked how you suggested that in order for students to use their brain and think critcially, they need to be working on projects that are not only unfamiliar to them but also interesting. Having students become engaged in activities is a necessity. If students are not encouraged to use their brains and become hands-on learners with engagement, they will never master the objective intended for the lesson.

    ReplyDelete