Reading Reflection #5

1. Discussion on the items that should be considered before starting a project with students.
Before initially starting a project teacher's should make sure to create a list of any objects, tools and resources that will be used during the project. After the list has been created make sure to check your inventory to see if you may need to purchase any of the items. You can also see if any parents are willing to donate anything. Also, if your students need access to the internet for research make sure that you arrange that as well. Making sure to introduce any new technology to students is extremely important for the success of the project and your students' learning. Thinking ahead to work out possible difficulties will ensure that the project goes smoothly.

2. Discussion on teachers’ and students’ management needs.
As it highlights on page 78 of our book, the over-arching goal of these projects is to teach students how to manage their time effectively. Providing a calendar with all major deadlines on it is an effective way to ensure that students and teachers are very aware of what needs to be accomplished in the course. Putting this online also gives parents access to what their children are learning and when assignments need to be turned in. Making sure that students can have access to their work anywhere is really important. I suggest using an online blog or google document to make sure that working at home or the library is possible. Grouping students is another important aspect of Project-Based Learning to keep in mind. Making sure to put students with different strength skills together increases the success of working together because each student has a role in the group. On pages 84 and 85 of our book also provides a list of management needs that should be met while incorporating PBL into the classroom.

3. Discuss some of the technology applications that should be considered for use in a project.
 Some of the technology applications that should be included into a PBL classroom are: wiki pages, blogs, drupal, textpattern, prezi, personalized webpages, imovie and google documents. Several of these programs are really easy to teach to students. Wiki pages and blogs are very useful in the classroom because they are easy to edit and to use. Anyone can view these blogs so it makes working in groups much more tolerable. Using these also makes it easy for parents and teachers to view each groups work.  Google documents are just as easy to use because it gives students access to their work anywhere, not just the classroom. Power point presentations and prezi are also useful tools to use for creating presentations for the classroom. I personally like prezi better because it's right online and can be saved just like a power point. The only thing to remember is to introduce these programs to students prior to requiring their use in the classroom.

4. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.
Several of the aspects that were discussed in this chapter are very useful in our projects for this course. Creating a list of all of the items that we need was easily made by creating our concept map. When creating our concept map we had to make sure that we covered every part of the project. Working in a group is often time consuming and can be hectic, but making sure that each of us has a part in the assignments makes managing our time that much easier. Each of the girls in my group plays an important role in the success that we've had thus far. We make sure to highlight what each of us is covering before we leave class to ensure that each aspect is completed by the deadline. Our deadlines are also posted online so if we ever forget something we can always check on our class website. We are incorporating several of the technology applications that I mentioned in this class and within our groups project. We have our group blog for gardening ideas and reflections and we have used google documents to make sure that each member is on the same page. We are using power point, excel, and several other applications for our lesson plans and other projects for this class. With this project we are able to incorporate many, if not all of the aspects that are highlighted in this book.