Reading Reflection Three

1. Discussion on what should be considered in finding “the Big Idea” for a project.

Identifying the core concepts and processes are at the heart of the subjects we teach and is the first step in project planning. All subject areas focus on big ideas and so do lessons in the real world so after identifying concepts and processes that the students should understand we also have to reflect on why the concepts are important. In finding the big idea we should consider how the idea will apply in the real world, what is the relevance to the students’ lives, who cares about the idea, and who will it affect. One of the most important aspects to take into consideration is the real-world contexts that go along with the idea. When students know that their projects offer value for their community, they become more invested in learning.

2. Discussion on the 2lst Century skills.

All well designed projects allow students to stretch their intellectual muscles in ways that traditional activities cannot. One way to do this is to plan activities that are associated with Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The objectives are to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. All of these objectives are important when doing an assignment but for project-based learning the last three objectives are especially important.

3. Discussion on the 21st Century literacies.

In the 21^st century literacy has to go beyond just reading and writing. The definition of literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute using materials of varying contexts. Literacy involves learning to be independent, aware, and productive citizens. Digital age literacy includes inventive thinking, effective communication, and high productivity. Students and teachers need these skills to learn and live in an increasingly digital world.

4. Discussion on each of the essential learning functions.

In this chapter there are eight essential learning functions.

1.     Ubiquity: Learning Inside and Outside the classroom, and All the Time: Tools that support project learning by giving students the opportunity to learn anytime and anywhere. Teachers should look for tools that support project-based learning such as hand held devices and web applications.

2.     Deep Learning: Teachers should help students to go beyond information created by others and help them to make sense of the raw information on the web. Students learn more when they have to navigate, sort, organize, analyze, and make graphical representations in order to express their learning.

3.     Making Things Visible and Discussable: The first step in getting conversation going in the classroom is to make thoughts and ideas visible and sharable to the class. With digital tools teachers are able to show rather than tell, see things not normally seen with a naked eye, and express ideas through multimedia.

4.     Expressing Ourselves, Sharing Ideas, Building Community: The web is in a current transition from an information medium into a social medium. Students are living in a digital age where they are continually exposed to these mediums so it will be easy for teachers to incorporate it in their classroom to express their ideas and build a society around shared interests.

5.     Collaboration-Teaching and Learning with Others: Current technology and tools around us encourage students to learn together and that is useful in projects that include collaboration.

6.     Research: Most of the projects students will be doing involve research and much of that research will be done on the internet. For this reason teachers should learn about quality directories, search engines and internet filtering.

7.     Project Management: Planning and Organization: Management helps students to manage their time, work, sources, feedback, drafts, and products during projects. One thing teachers can do is to create a web home page for their class so students can post, share, and organize their project.

8.     Reflection and Iteration: Students learn more when they are able to examine their ideas from all points of view. The easiest way for students to reexamine their work and to get feedback is to create a blog. Students can post drafts and get feedback so that they can learn and improve their project before the final draft.

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

All of the information provided is important for future teachers to know and is relevant to our project-based learning assignment. The assignment requires the students to do much research about their topics so it is important for me to know how to filter the internet to find appropriate sites for them to view. The students also need to know how to navigate the internet so once they are on the site they can dig for further meaning and discover useful information.  We are in the age of technology and this chapter showed me how to utilize many resources so that my students can learn about the big idea of their project through many tools. This chapter showed me how students can utilize many of the tools that they already use in their personal lives and use them in their education so that they can merge the two worlds to learn more.