Reflection #4

1)       Potential Pitfalls in Project Design:

The potential pitfalls are 1) long on activity, short on learning outcomes (avoid creating a project about something that can be just as well read or taught in a lecture and avoid projects where students produce similar products or products that can be found in reference material), 2) technology layered over traditional practice (avoid research reports in an electronic slideshow when conducting research on the internet), 3) trivial thematic units (do not confuse thematic teaching with PBL which may be trivial, rather think of a unifying theme that makes important connections and elevates learning by making certain the project is interdisciplinary, collaborative, and rigorous), and 4) overly scripted activities with many, many steps in projects (may lead to limited and predictable results).  We need to be mindful of these potential pitfalls when creating/planning a project that focuses on the quality of the student experience.  In order to achieve authentic learning for students and avoid coming up short, we need to keep looking until we can develop a project that eliminates these pitfalls.
 I believe that our group can avoid some of these pitfalls by offering our students authentic activities that allow them various ways to present their projects using different tools; and by using technology to bring students together with students in another country to discuss weather, as well as instant Doppler radar and weather maps.  We are hoping to make our project more relevant by having students learn about the effects that weather has on our Earth and its different regions (such as deserts due to no rain, or tundra due to severe cold temperatures, etc.) or simply our own community (four seasons with long winters, short summers).  Another way to make it more relevant for students is letting them explorer how weather and severe weather might affect our crops in the U.S. and Michigan or tourism and throughout our project, we need to allow students to make some of their own instructional decisions.

2)       Features of a Good Project:

A good project keeps its students in mind, the school calendar, the curriculum sequence, student readiness, and student interests, meaning you need to be flexible and understand that this year’s class may be different than last year’s class, today may be different than tomorrow, and students may have different abilities, allowing for varying amount of work to be completed, therefore a project or lessons may need to be altered accordingly.  A good project does not plan everything in detail from the beginning so as to not to constrain the project and limit where students can take it.  Nevertheless planning needs to be done, but in an ongoing collaborative process with lots of feedback from all of us that focuses on how we can make our project better, comprehensive, or realistic to capture students’ interests.  A good project has a flexible framework to guide project design, meaning we can make changes to our concept map/lessons that may reflect students’ interests and curiosities and learning modalities to make learning experiences more relevant.  A good project focuses on a driving question that allows tapping rich data, primary sources, acquire 21^st-century skills, and get at important learning dispositions. Good authentic projects are realistic by allowing for interdisciplinary connections to be made that promote inquiry skills as experts might, teach Internet research, allow students to make decisions, work in teams where they will learn from each other, and provide evidence of what was learned.  A good project avoids the traditional way of thinking when designing a project; it incorporates real-life or simulated situations in which students naturally want to learn more by asking open-ended questions, learn by doing, and reach beyond school to involve others by trying to find answers that involve their community in order to construct meaning.      

3)       Where Project Ideas Come From:

I agree with the book that good projects can be found everywhere.  Often times there are already great projects which are developed by other teachers ready for us to be accessed.  There are many more resources from books and online that we can search for, but we need to make certain that it is relevant to students.  As was discussed in the last chapter, we might want to use disruptive technology, such as cell phones and iPods as a resource to  build a project around.   

4)       Steps to Design a Project:

Now that we have created our first concept map which is our framework for our project, we need to revisit it to refresh our memory and create a “Project Sketch” (a brief description of the project framework /synthesis we have thought about so far).  It needs to include the following steps of learning the objectives for all disciplines, incorporate 21^st-Century skills we want to address, what learning dispositions we want to focus on, establish evidence of understanding, plan the project theme or what you want students to inquire about, create, or do through real-life connections, think about how to set the stage for students, and the path inquiry teams may take as they make projects their own.  Additionally, to design an authentic project, we need to create an asset map (concept map) in a program like Inspiration, which details the material goods, strengths, and talents of our team members, students, others, and resources that can be put to use for our project (such as phone numbers and web sites), and is something we are encouraged to add to.  Once our project comes together, we need to use technical aids to help us manage our resources, such as a spread sheets like Google Docs that everyone has access to.   

5)       How do Concepts Relate to our Topic/Project:

The concepts inform us about the course of action we need to take when planning our projects, what to do in order to have a good project that is authentic and relevant to students’ lives, and where we can get ideas for PBL projects and helpful steps in designing a project.  Planning a project can be overwhelming and I agree that when first creating a concept map (framework) we cannot possibly think of everything and it is an evolving process.  Additionally, to organize our ideas in writing, I have learned that we need to collaboratively develop a Project Sketch, an asset map, and technical aids to manage our project.  I have further learned that a good project has a driving question for inquiry, so I have been thinking about that based on our theme, e.g. “What do we need to know to create a weekly weather forecast?”  Our team is trying to make interdisciplinary connections to make our project more authentic by using science as the core subject and math, social studies, Language Arts, art, and technology as the disciplines with a secondary focus.  As always, collaboration and spending time on preparation is vital to the authenticity and relevance of our project.  So, we all should try to find some time online researching a project similar to what we want to do.  This would be a great resource to guide our project and make it better or we simply agree to create our own project from scratch and incorporate technology in a creative way. J J J