Reflection #3

1. Identifying the big ideas is the first step in planning a project. The big idea is defined as the processes and the core concepts of the project. There are many questions that teachers need to ask themselves when working on projects with students. What core concepts and processes should the students know after studying with you? If your student understood or could do just two or three things, what would those be? Every grade level focuses on big ideas. After students are able to identify the process and the concept of the project you need to make sure your students understand and have them reflect on why these concepts are important. 2. A well-designed project causes students to stretch their intellectual muscles in ways traditional learning activities may not. That is why children need to use 21st century skills to adjust themselves to the world around them. The last three steps in Blooms Taxonomy are relevant in using project based learning. Those three steps are, analyze, evaluate, and create. Example of traditional biography assignment vs. a reconsidered biography assignment: Traditional: Study a distinguished person from the Renaissance period and write a report describing his/her life and notable achievements. Reconsidered: Study two or three figures from the Renaissance who distinguished themselves in the same field. Develop criteria for "hall of fame" status, compare these figures' accomplishments, then select one individual for inclusion in a "Renaissance Hall of Fame." Justify your selection. Design an appropriate seal for the award he or she will be granted. 3. All definitions for "21st century literacies" go well beyond the ability to read and write. By all of the definitions given, literacy comes down to learning to be independent, aware and productive citizens. A true-to-life project naturally involves opportunities for learners to become literate in the 21st century sense of the world and for 21st century teachers to accomplish their own 21st century goals. 4. Essential learning functions: 1. Ubiquity: learning inside and outside the classroom, all the time: overreaching and desirable quality of tools that support project learning. Look for tools that help students be more mobile and learn wherever they are. 2. Deep learning: go beyond "filtered" information and help students find and make sense of "raw" information on the Web. Primary sources are becoming more accessible at all times. 3. Making things visible and discussable: showing rather than telling, conceptualizing with mind maps, seeing things too big or too small or too fast or too slow for the naked eye, examining history through digital artifacts, expressing ideas through photography and multimedia, graphical representation and modeling, animation and digital art. 4. Expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, building community: using the web in school to express ideas and build society around shared interests. Examples are blogs, social software, tagging, and virtual meetings. 5. Collaboration- Teaching and learning with others: tools that help us learn together, using shared applications, plan virtual experiences that allow people to meet. 6. Research: puts information literacy to the test. What helps students make sense of and organize what they need from ever expanding web are, search engines with filtering, bookmark tagging tools, and citation engines. 7. Project management: planning and organization: helps students manage time, work, success, feedback from others, drafts, and products during projects. Examples are Desire2Learn, Moodle, Netvibes, iGoogle, My Yahoo!, and protopage. 8. Reflection and iteration: a blog can be considered a personal diary pr journal, where students put their thinking on the table to give it a good look. Wikis are helpful for drafting interactions of work and sharing works in progress. 5. This chapter relates greatly to what we are doing in class. We are using up-to-date 21st century skills to complete our projects. We are also using the essential learning functions to work together in our groups to be successful in completing our projects.