Reading Reflection #2

1.        Focus of Learning Communities:

The focus seems to be making time for new ways of working with colleagues and peers to promote academics by being innovative (coming up with new ideas) whether it is virtual or face-to-face.  During this time frequent and intentional collaboration, communication, and team work amongst (several) teachers allows for the development of projects that incorporate cutting-edge technology and solve problems with the help of other people's critical feedback, rather than doing it all alone.  This allows for other points of views to create the best learning environment possible for students.  This feedback can be from a teacher in your building or from a teacher on the other side of the world as seen in the example of Julie Lindsay which I thought was a great way to collaborate. 

2.        Benefits of Learning Communities:

I believe it is working closely with colleagues/peers and having somebody to  brainstorm with. This is a great way for professional growth!   Especially when it comes to planning and reflecting about the classroom.  Teachers can connect with other teachers and support each other through 21st-century projects.  They can learn new patterns of thinking, learn how to capitalize on the wisdom of the group, and learn how to learn from others.  I believe this can be intimidating, especially if one person is set in their ways, but can highly benefit an individual as a projects takes off since it is a lot easier to divide the work and necessary resources amongst several people than do it all alone.  I can learn from other people and reviewing what other people are doing helps me develop curriculum and reflect better as a teacher, because I have somebody else to compare it to.  Two or more heads are better than one, so I believe that more teachers are better than one when spreading good ideas that can drive a school forward.  Now the book calls the benefits: decreased teacher isolation, increased commitment to the mission, shared responsibility, more powerful learning, and a higher likelihood of fundamental, systematic change.     

3.        How Learning Communities affect teachers:

         Teachers are immersed in rich learning experiences and new context for learning creates new opportunities for teachers to work together with a shared interest and goal in mind, even if it is via an online community of teachers or as in the example of Julie Lindsay, on the other side of the world. Teachers need to find time to watch and reflect on each other's classroom interactions and give each other critical feedback.  Teachers are no longer isolated in the classroom and have other peers/teachers that share their passion/focus for a project/theme.  Being part of an online community of educators with whom one should connect frequently in order to learn, collaborate, share, and support one another.  Teachers seek their own opportunities for learning. 

4.        How Learning Communities affect students:

It focuses on what students are learning by collaborating in teams/groups to develop the skills necessary in the "real world."  Students learn to communicate, solve problems, manage projects, learn how to motivate others and themselves, as well as be persistent in getting a project completed.  This in turn helps them build bonds as they share triumphs and disappointments.   

5.        Components for shared vision in Learning Communities:

The book describes that one should have a clear sense of mission, share a vision of the conditions they must create to achieve the mission, work together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice to achieve the mission, organize into groups headed by teacher-leaders, focus on student learning, are goal-and results-oriented, collaborate with each other, hold shared values and beliefs, commit themselves to continuous improvement, and see themselves as life-long learners.  I agree that as teachers who are trying to make a difference with digital-age projects we need to be life-long learners and focus our energy on student learning with the collaboration of others.  I love how there are many resources available for ongoing projects to help us see the components in action.  I particularly like the GLOBE website since I love science. 

6.        How this chapter relates to our topic/project:

Even though we may feel uncomfortable and intimidated because we are not 100% familiar with all of the technology or what is required of us in the group project, we are learning that it is important to communicate and collaborate in order to create a final project for instructional purposes that is centered around a shared topic. We are collaborating by having developed a network with other educators/peers online by creating our own group blog and making time to look at other groups' blogs.  By creating a concept map together on a group blog as well as posting our blogs on the chapters as part of a book study we can share and receive critical feedback that is beneficial for our personal growth.

Reading Reflection #2

1.) A learning community is basically summed up as a group (can be as small as two teachers) who collaboratively works together to solve problems to help better themselves as teachers. Essentially, they "learn how to learn together." There are three main focus points of Professional Learning Communities. The first focus is to ensure that the students learn. As a teachers, probably our most important job is making sure that our students actually learn what we teach them. The second focus is to create a culture of collaboration for school improvement. Collaborating with other teachers on teaching methods or strategies to control student behavior will help improve the school as a whole. The third focus is on results. After we instruct our students, it's very important to understand what they've actually learned from all the lessons.

2.) Professional Learning Communities often won't see success overnight. However, after the program has been in place for a couple of years, you will definitely start noticing some benefits. One benefit that you will see is an increased commitment to the mission of the school. Another benefit that you will notice is a higher likelihood of fundamental, systemic change where necessary. One last benefit that I will mention is that learning communities will unleash more powerful learning among the students. There's no doubt that creating a learning community in your school would be an excellent idea!

3.) Learning communities not only benefit the school as a whole, teachers are also able to reap benefits as well. Probably the biggest benefit that a teacher will experience from learning communities is decreased isolation. Normally, teachers have to teach all day by themselves with hardly any interaction with other teachers. This is not the case for learning communities! In a learning community, teachers collaborate with each other on a regular basis. This definitely helps keep the teachers sane. Along with enjoying interactions with other teachers, learning communities also benefit teachers by sharing responsibilities with each other. This does a great job of lightening the load for most teachers, which helps reduce stress. Overall, most teachers absolutely love the idea of creating learning communities at their schools!

4.) Students also reap some benefits from learning communities. Learning communities help students develop excellent collaboration skills. Since learning communities focus on interacting with each other and working together, they give the students a taste of the real world. In turn, this helps prepare students for life after school. Another benefit that student experience is more attention. In a typical classroom setting, it's quite easy for students to go unnoticed; sometimes students are even ignored. However, a learning community promotes a healthy classroom atmosphere with active participation and learning among all students. Overall, learning communities are very beneficial for students.

5.) There are many components for shared vision in learning communities; I'll discuss just a few of them. One component is members working together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice to achieve the mission. By working together, you're able to brainstorm countless ideas together. When you put a lot of great minds together, you're able to come up with some pretty amazing ideas. Another component is that members of the community can see themselves as life-long learners. By joining a learning community, you'll be able to learn learning strategies that will stick with you for the rest of your life. One last component of learning communities is that community members commit themselves to continuous improvement. Not only will this greatly benefit the school, this sense of commitment will probably end up spilling over into other areas of the teachers' lives. Since learning communities help create dedication in people, it's essentially making the world a better place!

6.) The whole concept of a learning community directly relates to our group project. Together, all four of us will work collaboratively throughout the semester on our unit on weather monitoring (GO WHIRLWINDS!). As we go through the process of creating lessons on different topics related to monitoring the weather, we'll all be learning how to learn together. The book says that communities can be as small as two people. Well, our community will be composed of four people. There's no doubt in my mind that all four of us will bring some excellent ideas, and some not so great ideas. By working together as one unit, a close-knit community, we'll easily be able to weed through the not so good ideas and combine each others good ideas to form amazing ideas. I'm excited to see The Whirlwind's learning community grow stronger over the course of this semester!

Weather Concept Map

Reading Reflection #2

1.  Currently in The United States we have encountered a lot of changes within the educational system but one thing that has stayed predominately similar up until now is the focus on learning communities. Many teachers across the country spend a majority of their day locked in their classrooms teaching the same lessons over and over, causing themselves to feel isolated and bored. However, when teachers take the initiative to create new opportunities for learning they may discover that working together with other colleagues is more rewarding. As a teacher we can readjust the focus of learning communities from secluded classrooms to lively opportunities of collaborated teaching. Technology is a great assistive tool to help teachers and students come together to have a more group oriented learning session. 

2. Open learning communities have a lot of benefits, especially when it comes to looking at individual strengths. One thing that I particularly enjoyed was how collaborative teaching will teach the teacher how to broaden their practices by incorporating not only their own techniques but also techniques from their colleagues into their lessons. This teaches teachers how to be flexible and respond to critical feedback. It will bring colleagues together and help build respect. If done properly, learning communities will help teachers feel more connected to their job and workplace. Not only will it benefit the teachers it will also become a benefit to the students. Not all students learn the same way, or even have the same academic strengths so by having multiple teaching styles incorporated you are giving those students an opportunity to do things differently. 

3. Learning communities have a great affect on teachers because it helps them become less dependent on working in solitude and more dependent on being open to discussion and reflection with other teachers. Learning communities not only happen within your own school but can happen all over the world, just like Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis. Belonging to a community will help you feel more productive and lead you to more powerful learning. When many teachers are striving for the same goal you will have a sense of shared responsibility, which will help reduce the amount of pressure you feel to do everything on your own. 

4. Leaning communities are crucial to students because it teaches them what it is like to live and participate in the real world. So much of learning is done in isolation but in reality what we should really be teaching our students is how to work together and ask for help when needed. Implementing a open learning community teaches our students just how to develop their real life skills such as problem solving, communication, project management, motivation, and persistence. Although these types of communities are highly demanding it is important for our students to understand what it means to learn to learn together.

5. Before it is possible to create a shared vision in your learning community it is important that the teachers are all striving towards the same goal of working together to build a deeper understanding. Not only will this benefit the role of the teacher but also the role of the student as a learner. With a clear sense of mission, and clearly defined goals the teachers are free to collaborate in groups and begin focusing on student learning. In order to be successful the teachers need to commit themselves to improvement and learn to share values and beliefs on what is best for their students learning. If done properly teachers will have been able to create not only a better place for working, but a better place for learning.

6. Everything we learned about learning communities in this chapter is directly related to us in this class because we are the perfect example of what the beginning stages of teaching/learning collaboration looks like. We are working together in groups to form common ground about what we hope to teach through our projects and learn through others. As a team we are constantly collaborating by individually adding to our pool of knowledge by completing our projects and assignments together.

Reading Reflection #1

1. Project-Based Learning (PBL) will completely change the way students feel about learning new material. It's an interactive journey that makes learning fun for students. As you embark on the journey that is Project-Based Learning (PBL), there are a few things that you should keep in mind. The first thing you should do is reflect on your learning goals for the class. You should also reconsider the way you talk to your students; you need to be ready to step outside of the box and engage with your students in new ways. Another thing that you should do is examine your classroom management style and be prepared to help students improve their own progress management skills.

2. When considering whether or not you want to use the PBL approach, you should take a close look at the benefits of using the PBL approach. Some of the overall benefits of the PBL approach include: Students build great collaboration skills by working together to solve problems, teachers are able to achieve learning goals in new ways through the use of technology, and students engage in real-world activities which increases their interest level to learn new things.

3. The benefits to students who participate in PBL are quite astounding! Some benefits that participants of PBL will see are: development of good communication skills, development of a deeper understanding of how the world actually works, development of solid inquiry skills, learning to be flexible with work hours, and having the amazing feeling that they can do something to change the world!

4. The PBL approach might seem like it's actually quite flawless. Well, believe it or not, there are actually some issues to consider before jumping into the PBL approach. One issue to consider is that parents and/or colleagues might not approve of your decision to incorporate this approach. They might be old school and prefer traditional teaching instead of a 21st-century approach such as PBL. Another issue to consider is that the PLB approach is very time consuming for both the teacher and the students. The teacher needs to spend a decent amount of time preparing the project for the students and the students also need to spend some serious time actually working through the project.

5. After reading about New Technology High School, I immediately wished that I would've been able to go there! What they're currently doing there sounds like a fantastic idea. It lines up perfectly with the New Technology Model and is a great way for students to build collaboration skills. In addition, it also helps students better understand technology and teaches them some excellent research strategies. I believe that other school systems should focus on modeling their schools around that of New Tech High.

Reflection #1

1.  As we journey through Project Based Learning (PBL), I agree that we need to keep in mind that today's students are up to the challenge of the digital world and its tools for inquiry/research, collaboration, and communication with varying levels of readiness.  In my pre-internship in a fourth-grade classroom I have observed first-hand how projects are worth the effort, because they engage all students and allow teachers to be learners and help us find new ways to engage with students through technologies that make projects more authentic, meaningful, and rigorous.  I had students research a project on the Earth, Sun, and Moon and create brochures online and present them.  Hence, we need to keep in mind that students live and learn in the real world and real-world projects can help diverse learners meet instructional goals in various contexts.  The book suggests that by engaging actively in the 'edublogger' community, we can offer improvements, share our strategies and ideas, reflect on our teaching practices, and work collaboratively to create such good projects for our students.  Is that, however, really the only way?   

2.  I agree that in the PBL approach, the overall benefits are that the teacher is no longer the content expert and student-driven learning is emphasized.  The learning communities come together to discuss, debate, and exchange ideas in PBL projects that shape the centerpiece of the curriculum and help students master the big ideas through deep meaningful learning.  I like how students produce authentic products by investigating open-ended questions through real-world projects/activities that allow for student choice based on their importance and practice the strategies of authentic disciplines, by collaboratively working together.  Technology is integrated as a tool for discovery, collaboration, and communication where students get to experience learning in a new way.  This in turn allows us to achieve learning goals in new ways by collaborating and implementing these projects across the globe.  I particularly like the fourth-grade project where students become "important detectives" to figure out where in the world familiar objects come from by tracking shipments in real time and trade information and artifacts with students in other countries and how it keeps evolving with better technology.  I agree that PBL prepares students to thrive in an ever-changing world and helps them with every aspect of designing, implementing, and assessing projects that meet the complex needs of the digital-age learner in order for students to make connections they would not otherwise see.  However, what happens if we need to solve a problem without technology available?

3.  I like how in the PBL approach, students benefit because they pursue their own questions to create their own meaning. Students access and analyze information from all corners of the globe, and connections amongst students and experts are made in real time.   I recognize that PBL increases student motivation, problem-solving, higher-order thinking skills, collaboration, participation, information fluency, digital citizenship, and creativeness.  I have gathered that students will learn how to work as a team to solve problems, collaboratively find answers, and learn to deal with change. I agree that with the PBL approach and the most important benefits where students develop good communication skills, good inquiry skills, students learn to be flexible with their working hours because they know other people are relying on them to meet their deadlines, thus teaching them responsibility, that the world does not simply revolve around them, and that through communication with and understanding of other people, individuals can do something about changing the world. 

4.  I believe that issues that need to be considered in the PBL approach are that it takes time to develop new instructional strategies, because students have to learn these new skills.  As teachers we need to collaborate with other specialists and teachers to effectively plan and prepare a project.  As teachers we need to be comfortable in the learner role, because the learning curve to master new technologies to get the job done can be steep and we may run into challenges, need to conduct more research, or seek out expert advice.  I agree that in the beginning we won't know all the answers, and adapting to change is essential for our learning and our student's learning.  The book emphasizes that we need to consider our learning goals, the way we talk to students, our classroom management style, the physical arrangements of the class, how we think about assessment, what work/artifacts to collect, and how to communicate with parents and colleagues to defend the 21st-century project approach. I agree that unless the whole school is convinced of PBL, it can be more challenging, in particular overcoming parents' reservations about technology to get the project started.  How can you make certain that all students are allowed to participate and that your principal is on board with time consuming projects when one has to meet deadlines and mandated testing?     

5.  I like how "New Technology High" believes that real-world learning offers benefits that textbook-based instruction cannot match and it drives the entire curriculum model to support the workforce needs of the 21st Century.  I like how technology is encouraged and everywhere and textbooks are rare, but is not the main focus and simply considered a tool. One of my professors once said: "You are as smart as the technology you are using" and I whole heartedly agree with that statement in today's technology driven world.  It is convenient how students can access their projects on any computer that is connected to the Web, even at home and online assessment tools are encouraged to give students feedback on their projects.  This is also possible, because the student body size is kept small and teachers know their students well, allowing less time on student management issues, thus allowing more time for learning.  I like how students are included in fixing the holes in possible projects and how teachers are encouraged with incentives to work together with a focus on instruction.  I think it is cool how the entire school with the help of the school district in Napa, California has students think critically, collaborate as part of a team by using technology as a tool for solving real-world problems/issues and in turn receives financial support to establish a cutting-edge infrastructure for learning.  I wished that teachers everywhere could be encouraged to experiment and be innovative, something that is not widespread in the public school system in order to share what works and does not.  However, I don't believe the classroom sizes will be small where I will be teaching and this model sounds like it works there because the whole community is behind it, but can it truly work for any community?   

Reading Reflection 1

When a teacher first decides to incorporate Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the classroom there are a few things that the teacher needs to keep in mind to ensure that their students are receiving all of its benefits. I found that one of the most important things that a teacher needs to be aware of is that most of today’s students are more than prepared for the project that lies ahead. The world we currently live in gives us instant access to almost anything at the touch of our fingers. As a teacher we need to understand that a majority of our students are already capable of using many of our resource tools, so in order to keep the students attentive to the matter at hand we need to guarantee that the lessons and projects that we are providing them with are personal and relevant to their own lives. We have to provide our students with incentive to inquire about questions and problems that occur in real life. I believe if we can find a way to successfully connect with our students through Project-Based Learning they will prove to us that the assignment was worth the effort. Lastly, a teacher needs to understand that their contributions through Project-Based Learning is not only helpful to the students, but to teachers all over. The more time teachers spend being flexible with their assignments the more they get to learn about what really works for them. Project-Based Learning has many benefits but in my opinion the most important benefit comes from the fact that students are able to build their own learning environments that are developed around their own thoughts. The students are able to pursue the information in their own way and are encouraged to discuss, debate, and exchange ideas with others. Another benefit that I believe comes from using PBL is teaching the students to extend their own knowledge by having them dig for their own answers. Opposed to a majority of classrooms that we see today where most of the teachers supply their students with pieces of information, PBL teaches students to make learning an independent process. All though there are many benefits to PBL there is one major issue that still seems to persist. The biggest concern that I have with Project-Based Learning is that technology is continually growing and it can be difficult at times for teachers to stay as up to date on the newest equipment as it quickly outdates itself. The New Tech Model seems like a fantastic idea to get students working together but one of the aspects that leave me with questions is that of the technology dependence we are instilling in our students. If we are teaching our children to use technology to solve all of their problems how are they going to know how to seek answers when technology is not available?