Reflection 6 (Allison Burt)

Allison Burt

Reflection 6

1. Discuss how technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths.

Technology tools including blogs and online surveys can encourage students to be self-reflective. Students can use blogs to continuously evaluate and write about the process of the project. They can express what is going well and what needs polishing for their projects.  Online surveys can be useful to see how group members are doing on their individual tasks. Then students will compare with other group members responses and reflect based upon that information. Surveys allow the group members to be able to gather information regarding individual strengths and weaknesses.

2. Describe several ways in which you can get students’ minds ready for a project.

First, before kicking off a project allow students time to think about the possibilities they can do for their projects. A good idea requires “thinking” time. Students should be researching their ideas using technology based on the focus topic. Teachers should be networking with other resources so students can engage in real-life experiences related to the topic. The teacher can invite or contact outside resources/guests to inspire the students and spark their thinking on the focused topic. The teacher should encourage their students to think outside the box by asking higher order of thinking questions. Teachers may use google earth or Flickr to present information prior to their project. Teachers should discuss the topic daily to track students’ progress on their ideas regarding the focus topic. Make sure you give them choices and direct them to “rich” resources.

3. Discuss the elements of teaching fundamentals first.

Teachers should recognize that a complicated project working with unfamiliar software tools should not be placed at the beginning of the school year or semester. It should be a gradual incline of complexity by building on prior knowledge. Students need an abundance of practice to be able to apply complicated tools within their projects. Teachers had stated in the text that they had their students working on different elements of a larger project for a year before doing a complicated project.

4. Describe the important steps in preparing students for using technology in project.

Teachers should, “Set Up a Technology Playground” for their students. This allows students to interact with their peers to learn from each other the new technology they will be using. Also involve parents as well because they can be updated on recent technology and what their child is doing in their class. Allow students who do well and enjoy exploring new technology to be training their classmates. Stations are an excellent way to demonstrate and familiarize the class with different tech tools they will be using. Students who are able to play and do hands-on activities with new tools will become more comfortable by time they tackle a difficult project. The more exposure the better off students will be. Also demonstrate the new tools by inviting a technology specialist in to introduce and explain how it works. Make sure your students know your expectations involving the specific tools. Handing out a rubric ahead of time and thoroughly explaining it will give them a clear understanding of the project.

5. Discuss ways to promote inquiry and deep learning.

Brainstorming as a class is one way to come up with different perspectives on a given topic. A teacher should encourage their students to look beyond one area of study such as science, and include all academic areas such as math, literature, and art. Having a combination of areas of study allows students to think in multiple dimensions. In the text it states, “Guide students toward skill questioning by imagining what practitioners or experts might ask” (p 108). This is a great point because teachers should challenge their students to come up with higher order thinking questions instead of based solely on facts.

Types of Questions (pages 108-110):

“Which one”- collect information, make informed decisions

“How”-understand problems

“What if”-use the knowledge they have to create a hypothesis

“Should”-making moral or practical decisions

“Why”-understand cause and effect

6. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

With our staying healthy workshop project we had recently integrated technology that some of us was not as familiar with. At first, everyone got a chance to practice using the tool when we first got introduced to it. It really helped in understanding the different elements we needed for the podcast. For example, the podcast we had created we had to work collaboratively to make it work. The team member that was most tech savvy was able to put together the technical parts of the podcast whereas the other team members worked on the script or other parts of the project to make it happen.  This relates to the chapter because it discussed that the teacher should allow time for playing and practicing with the new tools introduced. Also a rubric was clearly explained and posted regarding the project. Our group had a clear understanding of the expectations.