Reading Reflection #5

1.) Before having your students start a project, there are some important items that you as a teacher should consider first. You should start off by considering what resources your students will need when working on the project. Make sure to look at your inventory to see what supplies, tools, or other materials are available at the school or offered by your parent community and other supporters. Also, make sure that proper technologies will be available to your students (if required to complete the project). The next thing you should do before beginning the project is plan strategies to support effective time management, teaming, and assessment. Teaching students to be effective time-managers should be a part of every project you assign your students. Team planning with other teachers will help you tighten up any loose ends of your project. Since assessment is such a crucial part of PBL, it's important to plan proper assessments throughout the project. Overall, it's very important that you spend time planning each element of the project!


2.) Probably the most important management need of any project is time management. If the students don't understand how to properly manage their time, they will most likely start to fall behind on their project. And when the students start falling behind, it can be quite difficult for them to catch up to where they should be. So, ensure that your students know how to properly manage their time before starting the project.

Below are several TEACHER project-management needs listed in the book:
-Tools for communicating with students and others about the project
-Tools for making milestones and events visible and for notifying students when changes occur
-Methods for getting resources to students
-Systems for managing work products
-Assessment tools & strategies
-Structures that support a positive learning environment

Below are several STUDENT project-management needs listed in the book:
-Systems and tools that help students manage their time and flow of work
-Collaboration tools
-Methods for seeking assistance
-Systems that help students manage materials and control work drafts
-Ways to get and use feedback on their work


3.) Technology can be used in almost any project. The best technology application to use with a project is a class Wiki. This is a website that is able to easily be edited by the students. This is a great place for students to share ideas and collaborate with each other. Another way that technology can be used in a project is a blog. This is effective because what students post can only be changed by themselves. Other students can comment on the posts, but they can't change what someone has posted. Two more technology applications are Drupal and Textpattern. These are Web spaces that combine content management and blogging into one. Both of these resources are excellent ways for students to practice Web collaboration.


4.) The information presented in this chapter definitely relates to our group project. We need to make sure to include time-management practice into one of our first lessons. This will help prepare our students for the upcoming project they will do. The chapter also helps us realize that, as teachers, we have a lot of planning we need to do before we assign the project to our students. Since we plan on having our 5th grade class communicate with another 5th grade class in Sochi, Russia, we could incorporate the use of a blog into our project.