Reading Reflection 6

Technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths. Using blogs is a way for them to reflect on what they have done and how they can better themselves in the future projects/assignments. An online survey tool can be used to  identify the learning characteristics of an individual and groups.

In order to get students' minds ready, a teacher must start with identifying students' prior knowledge. A teacher should shake up students' ideas to generate interest and promote inquiry. One could do role-playing or discrepant events to create curiosity.

It is very crucial for teachers to teach fundamentals first. They need to set the stage for independent inquiry. That involves possibly a KWL activity to determine what students know, wonder, and want to learn. Teachers should also provide the assessment rubric that was created for the project to use as a roadmap toward great achievements.

There are multiple ways and steps to prepare yourself and students for technology. First, a teacher needs to plan efficient ways to get students ready to use technology for their learning. You can consider a way to set up opportunities for students to learn by and among themselves.  Encourage students to teach each other by setting up computer stations, each with one tool that will be used in the project, and then let them teach!

To promote inquiry and deep learning a teacher must guide students as they develop questions, plan investigations, and begin to put their plans to action.There are multiple primary outcomes that all students should understand. They are:

• There is a relationship between need and opportunity, and between scarcity and abundance. 
• Money, bartering, and other means of exchange have existed throughout history and across civilizations, and they continue to change.
• Modern money has symbolic worth as an exchange medium
• Economics, health, and well-being are related.
• Money means different things to different people.
• Humans are interdependent

Currently, my group is determining ways to get students' minds ready, as well as, the communities for our super fun kickball tournament, Kicks are for Kids. We also must use information from this chapter to determine how we will begin by teaching the fundamentals and use technology tools in the project. We also will determine ways to teach and prepare our class to use technology for this project, especially since they will be using ePals to talk with students from South Korea.

Updated Concept Map

Updated Concept Map:
I added a branch off of Team Sports to specifically include kickball, and then utilized that to touch on the event and its significance. I thought that this branch was important because it combined the different benefits of health with the purpose of the event. Overall, this concept map will show how all of these topics are interrelated and relevant to each other.

Concept Map

Original Concept Map

Chapter 4 Reading Reflection

Chapter 4 discusses the idea of quality, worthwhile project in a problem based learned classroom compared to any other project you may want to do. Although projects are a great way to get many types of learners involved in developing life long skills, if they are not “meaningful and motivating to learning” there is no point in wasting the teachers time or the students time on them. There are many potential pitfalls of project design one including the actual length of the project. You can work on something for a day, a week, or a month, but if it is not “the right size” for that topic, it does not matter. When determining the length that the project should last, always take into consideration if the students could learn the same things in a lecture or by reading a part of a textbook. You also always need to keep in mind that although technology is a great tool, it can also be a distraction if not used efficiently. Although there are a few ways project design can be difficult, if you always keep learning objectives, flexibility, and productivity in mind the outcome should be a good, worthwhile project. Good projects are based on flexibility and being able to take it in any direction that the children take it. Projects should have a purpose and a starting point but should not be a step-by-step recipe because it does not allow the children to think outside of the box. Projects also need to hit as many learning standards that they possibly can and in as many different ways that they can. If your project can effectively cross curriculums and intertwine different subjects, the learning possibilities are endless. Good projects most importantly reach beyond school to involve others and other outside sources. Project based learning is about developing students inquiry, decision making, and team work skills while also teaching them to critically think in real life situations. When teachers effectively utilize the surrounding community and real world situations, they are getting their students to use their traditional educational ideas and apply them to everyday life. Good projects learn by doing and utilizing the teacher as a facilitator of learning rather than a lecturer. In order to effectively carry out a good project, it begins with good ideas hat have been weeded out from the bad ones. A great resource for quality project ideas is your fellow teachers who may or may not have taught something like you are trying to get across. Collaboration between coworkers allows for classes and subjects to work with each other and more effectively sink in with the students. Another resource for project ideas is online resources such as Global SchoolNet, iEarn, and iHistory. In summation, do develop a good, worthwhile project, it takes thinking about the big picture and the objectives you want to portray to your students. Projects are supposed to be a new, exciting way to teach the traditional material and in order to keep the educational value consistent between the two worlds, most importantly we need to determine our learning targets and overall the best way to achieve those. The concepts in this chapter relate to our project directly because health and wellness is something that needs to be incorporated into education in any way possible. Although basic health and wellness will not typically interest every single child, by organizing and running an event you are giving them a stake in their own learning while allowing them to interact in the real world. Something specific that I learned and can incorporate into our project from this chapter is the absolutely crucial idea that the students need to be the leaders of the project as much as they can. The more responsibility you give the students, the more accountable for their learning they become.

Reading Reflection #6

1. Discuss how technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths.   Technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths.  This can be done by use of blogs to reflect what they are learning over the course of learning.  ProfilerPRO can be used to determine a student’s learning characteristics as well as identify their strengths and weaknesses.  Also, SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang are websites that use surveys to help students track trends and help individuals to compare their self-assessments with their whole group. 

2. Describe several ways in which you can get students’ minds ready for a project.   Before the project begins, the students will need to have their minds ready and a collection of their prior knowledge will need to be discovered.  Many teachers use a Know-Wonder-Learn activity to begin students with the project.  One important beginning step of introducing the project is to help students develop excitement, passion, imagination and begin to think about the project and develop ideas.  Teachers may help students develop excitement prior to beginning the project by posing questions a week or two before the project is introduced to get students engaged and excited about the topic. 

3. Discuss the elements of teaching fundamentals first.  It is important for teachers to teach the students fundamentals of the topic first, before launching the project.  This is important because students can then be introduced and taught the basics of the topic so they can distribute their time more efficiently.  Instead of using the project time to become familiar with the basics of the topic, they can manage their time more efficiently to study the topic deeper. 

4. Describe the important steps in preparing students for using technology in project.  Preparation to use technology in the project requires advanced planning. The use of technology is not the project, but instead, how the project will get done.  This preparation can be done by considering that you are a student, and which methods would be most effective to get the project done. 

5. Discuss ways to promote inquiry and deep learning.  By creating an exposure to many, un-alike topics, teachers can promote inquiry and deep learning by asking the students to brainstorm ways that those topics can be connected.  As a project is launched in this manner, students will branch off with their own inquiries to develop a deeper understanding in those areas they are interested. 

6. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.  Concepts in this chapter relate to my group’s project especially the idea of reaching a deeper understanding.  By allowing the students to brainstorm and develop their own chosen plans for health and nutrition, they can take the knowledge to a deeper understanding by investigating, researching and studying a topic they are more interested in.  

Collaborative Concept Map:Part B

The Collaborative Concept Map has been refined to add a combination of the KAS concept maps.  This collection resulted in a more in-depth, planning on the Kicks Are for Kids event hosted by the 4th Graders at Portage Central Elementary.

Collaborative Concept Map:Part B

https://bubbl.us/?h=236dad/4867c7/23y5VUoA0896w&r=2143941868

To revise my Concept Map, I added in the details for our Kickball tournament that will be part of our project. I originally had the Rules and Regulations of Kickball that are hoped to be found by the 4th graders and have now added their part in the Kicks are for Kids tournaments, as well as, broke down the details of the tournament and the kick-off meeting for the tournament.

Reading Reflection #5

Before beginning a project with students, one should consider the following:

1. Gather the resources necessary to support the project
2. Select the tool that will help students meet the learning goals
3. Think about how to make access to technology more frequently and equitably
4. Consider ways to engage with experts both in person and through technology
5. Plan a project calendar with milestones to help teach students how to become effective time managers
6. Learn management systems for another way to organize components of the project
7. Reset your expectations and experiment with different combinations
8. Plan your assessments (Formative assessments can create more opportunities to know what your students are thinking and understanding)

There are five different categories of assessment to use:

1. Monitoring-using checklists, inventories, or project logs
2. Observing-Watching and listening to what students do and say
3. Interacting- Asking questions to coax students into deeper thinking
4. Analyzing- Collecting and analyzing artifacts of student learning
5. Reporting- Organizing performance data to share with students, parents, and others

Teachers' Project Management Needs

1. Tools for communicating with students and others about the project
2. Tools for making milestones and events visible and for notifying students when changes occur
3. Methods for getting resources to students
4. Systems for managing work products
5. Structures that support a productive learning environment in which teams and individuals are engaged in a variety of learning tasks at the same time
6. Assessment tools and strategies

Students' Project Management Needs

1. Systems and tools that help them manage their time and flow of work
2. Systems that help students manage materials and control work drafts
3. Collaboration tools
4. Methods for seeking assistance
5. Ways to get and use feedback on their own work, through self-reflection, team input, and teacher advice
6. Ways to work iteratively and to see how parts add up to the whole

Some of the technology applications that should be considered for a project include:

1. Wiki
2. Blogs
3. Drupal
4. Textpattern

This chapter relates to our project in the sense, that we have to also take into consideration all of the above topics before we begin our project with a class. We need to determine all of the steps for our project to help it be as successful as possible. We also need to be aware of our project management needs as well as our students. Plus we need to incorporate different technology applications into our project. 

Reading Response #5

Introducing the idea of project based learning for a new project requires teachers consideration to get started.  This consideration includes the resources that will be needed as well as to plan the strategies to support effective time management, teaming and assessment.  Teachers’ management needs include a communication method to take place with the students, tools for marking and announcing milestones to be reached and looking into, and having available, the resources that will be needed by the students.  These resources may be new to students, so teachers should also a lot time to introduce unfamiliar items.  All in all, successful management of the teachers will result in the students learning management of their own.  Project management needs of the students includes methods for seeking assistance, ways to get and use feedback on their work through self-reflection, team input, and teacher advice, collaboration tools and tools to help manage their time.  This learned management of the students will be displayed by setting the end goals of their projects, and the steps that will need to be taken to reach them.  Relating to the management of students, teachers can incorporate technology applications.  This may include an online assessment for the students to complete to determine that the students did, in fact, take the management responsibilities of developing a plan to distribute their time and resources to successfully complete their project and meet their end goals.  This planning for the project to be done by teachers and students relates to our group project of tracking health habits in small groups by having the students work together to develop a plan for the week to obtain a healthy lifestyle as well as each student documenting, and communicating, their daily health data to their group to receive feedback.  

Reading Reflection #4

1. Discuss the potential pitfalls in project design. Some potential pitfalls in project design can begin with a project being long on activity, short on learning outcomes.  When planning a project, it is important to remember the outcomes you hope to achieve from the project.  Another potential pitfall is layering technology over traditional practice.  In our generation, it is importance to remember the useful help of technology, but that should not be the primary outcome of a project.  Technology is an important tool to use to help reach their goal, but the value of technology should not be misused.  Thematic unit is not PBL, but it does not mean that it has to be trivial.  As teachers, we have to be careful not to turn thematic teaching into a repetitive, useless project.  Instead we should think outside the box to turn it into PBL. Another potential pitfall in project design is a design that is overly scripted with excessive steps.  When assigning the projects, we should be aware not to assign projects with limited or predictable results. Instead of assigning “recipe” projects, we should encourage to reach their own outcomes.  Awareness of this will lead to more significant learning outcomes. 
2. Discuss the features of a good project. To create a good project, the potential pitfalls discussed above should be avoided.  Also being flexible and avoiding predictable “cookie cutter” projects helps develop good projects.  By making the topic broad, the kids have the ability to explore their own options.

3. Discuss where project ideas come from. There isn’t one specific place to find good project ideas.  Teachers can look through books, get ideas from colleagues, finds ideas online, etc. Once you get an idea for one great project, it will begin generating ideas for your next big projects.

4. Discuss the steps to design a project. To begin designing your project is to revisit the framework.  To revisit the framework, you make a list of the learning objectives and decide what you want your students to obtain from a certain project.  The next step is to have a good grasp on the topic.  If you would like your students to succeed with the project, it is important to understand the topic yourself to help guide them.  The next step is to plan a theme and structure for the project. Finally, you must think of how you will introduce the project and get your students excited to begin it!

5. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project. This chapter relates to our project because it gives us advice on how exactly to set up our first project. As a team we can take advice from this chapter and use the concepts in our own project, such as learning outcomes and flexibility.  Also, this chapter relates to our Kicks for Kids project because in order to develop a successful plan for the project, we were to pick a theme and then become knowledgeable about the topic before we can begin creating assignments. 

Lesson Plan

For my lesson plan, I am going to have the children research the many benefits of team sports. I will have them research in groups everything from social to health benefits and then have them organize them in a concept map/web, or an interactive powerpoint to show the class. After this part is done, I will then branch off into a "mini lesson" on kickball as an example and have them relate each concept they found in their research to that sport specifically. I will then have the children create poster boards that will hang around school to promote not only the benefits they researched, but our event as well. I want to use this lesson as a building block to show the significance of why we chose kickball instead of any other team sport. You lessons look great and it looks like we are all focusing on different aspects of it! :)

Podcast

Also, I created a Google Doc for us to toss around some ideas for our podcast. You both have editing access so here is the link:)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qNqvo_mrUIzf8MVR3AMh0EiGV7dPd1B5S94MZTLqtVE/edit

Assignment V

HI!

I thought it was a good idea to share our ideas for our lesson plans. I am going to be having my students pair into groups and discover the rules and regulations of Kickball. Then they will create a Podcast or Presentation Board to present to the class. After presentations, my kids are going to create and run a Kickball game based off of the information they gathered. :)

ASSIGNMENT #5

I just wanted to update you since we cant have two of the same lesson plans: 

My lesson plan is having the students research different categories that are benefited by playing kickball.  Once the research has been completed, the students will make a concept map to organize the information.  

Mine is already completed, so please don't use the same. 

Thank you. :) 

Good luck with your lesson plan! 

Reading Reflection #3

Project based learning seems to be a great idea, if executed correctly. The first thing that stuck out to me in this chapter is the ideal that the traditional textbook way of teaching can be somewhat efficient, but not open-ended. The results of traditional teaching are “predictable and often generic” compared to project based learning which offer more contextual, real world learning. When talking about the “big idea” for a project, you need to consider all avenues and directions that said project could possibly go in order to effectively choose the best one. Kathy Cassidy (pg. 44) utilizes the outside world to determine the big picture in her project pertaining to what the number 1,000 means to her elementary school students. By doing this, Kathy allows her students to interact with their classroom, their school, community, and the world with just the click of a button. Project based learning and the big picture are all about incorporating the real world into the classroom and paying attention to the children’s interests and experiences rather than just teaching the facts that your curriculum says. Other things that should be considered when deciding the big picture of a project are:

        

*real world context

*integration with other subjects

*resources/technology

*community

*new skills/stepping outside of the box

21^st century skills are something that are directly correlated to PBL. As educators, we are teaching children for jobs that are not even created yet that will be working with technology that hasn’t even been invented yet. In order to keep up with the times, we need to teach out students the skills they will need to constantly keep adapting to the change in the world throughout time. 21^st century skills “stretch intellectual muscles in ways traditional learning activities may not”. 21^st century skills and literacies prepare learners for the “world beyond school” by stepping outside of the educational box our society has locked us up in. 21^st century literacies address “the different range of skills required to learn and live in an increasingly digital world” as well as teaching students to become independent, aware, and productive citizens. It’s unrealistic to think that every single student you ever have is going to be part of the 1% and extremely successful, but it’s not absolutely impossible for that to happen. As educators, we need to prepare our students in everyway that we possibly can in order to help them be successful when that school bell rings at the end of the day. A way that we can proficiently integrate these techniques into our teaching is through many different learning functions working together, or the building blocks of whole self learning. The main idea of learning functions is to treat the child as a person rather than just a student. Making things visual and discussable was the learning function that stuck out to me most for the simple fact that when entering the real world, there are not going to be any more tests, papers, or essays where you can voice your opinion, you will need to be able to “show not tell” what you want to get across. It is important we stress to our students that effective communication and socialization are extremely important skills to master, it’s easy to live in a little classroom bubble where everyone is friends with each other, but the real world isn’t necessarily like that.  This chapter relates to our project because like any other project you create, you want it to be successful. While organizing a kickball tournament, you want your point of health and community to come across, rather than just a bunch of kids running around kicking a ball, and in order to do that you need to look at the big picture. This ideal helps when creating any project because if you don’t address the “point” of the project, why even do it? Busy work is a thing of the past, education needs to revolve around transferable, relatable, and quality skills rather than the memorization of everything.

Reading Reflection #4

It was very interesting to read about the four potential pitfalls of project design and really makes me think back on my past teaching experiences and how I will try to avoid pitfalls in the future. The pitfalls are:

• Long on activity, short on learning outcomes: You don't want to have a project that is long and busy, but reaches a small amount of learning aims.
• Technology layered over traditional practice: You should avoid having students research a topic and then presenting it on a slideshow. It's not a quality project.
• Trivial thematic units: Thematic teaching is not necessarily project-based learning. Try to incorporate more advanced, engaging projects. In the book it states instead of having students count apples and paint apple pictures, rather have the students compare the selection in the store to preferences of the student body and then have them create graphs of their results.
• Overly scripted with many, many steps: Over-prescriptive project plans that have many discrete steps can lead to limited and predictable results.

I enjoyed reading about the features of a good project and think it is very crucial to implement these features into projects for the students and teacher's benefits. One thing that stuck out to me was to have students learn by doing. I think that any student can learn much better by practicing or doing something than just listening to a teacher lecture about a topic. The features of a good project are:

• Loosely designed with the possibility of different learning paths
• Generative, causing students to construct meaning
• Center on driving questions or are otherwise structured for inquiry
• Capture student interest through complex and compelling real-life or simulated experiences
• Realistic and therefore cross multiple disciplines
• Reach beyond school to involve others
• Tap rich data or primary sources
• Structured so students learn with and from each other
• Have students working as inquiring experts might
• Get at 21st Century Skills and literacies, including communication, project management, and technology use.
• Get at important learning dispositions, including persistence, risk-taking, confidence, resilience, self-reflection, and cooperation
• Have students learn by doing

Project Ideas come from many different resources! It's amazing to learn where they have come from. Listed below are examples:

• A tried-and-true project with potential fro more meaningful, expressive learning
• Project plans developed by and for other teachers
• News stories
• Contemporary Issues
• Student Questions or interests
• A classroom irritant put to educational use
• A mash-up of a great idea and a new tool!

Using the steps to design a project should be very effective and I'm excited to try them out!

1. Revisit the Framework: You must determine the objectives and subjects the project will cover. As well as, decide on the 21st century skills you will address, and identify learning dispositions.
2. Establish evidence of understanding: Develop a project or plan to determine whether students understand or not
3. Plan the vehicle (Project theme or challenge): Create a project that challenges students and lets them have true-to-life connections
4. Plan the Entree into the project experience: Determine you're opener to get the students excited and engaged for the project!!

This relates to our project because we want to try our best to avoid any pitfalls and want to implement as many or all of the features to develop a good project for our students! Lastly, we should take advantage of using the resources of where project ideas come from and follow the steps to design a project to ensure success!

Concept Map

https://bubbl.us/mindmap

Reading Reflection #3

The first step in developing the "Big Idea" for a project is to get to know your students.  When a teacher knows the strengths and weaknesses of their students, they will then have a good idea of a project to develop and what kind of performance to expect from the students. Another important aspect is to choose a subject that is of importance to a student to hold their interest and maintain their interest until the end of the project. 

Allowing access for students to develop 21^st century skills has endless opportunities after the students finish the course. Having 21st-century literacy skills is to understand the ideas behind having 21st-century skills. Students who are literate in the 21st-century skills are independent, aware, and productive. Students who are taught in a PBL classroom are more likely to outshine students who are taught in a traditional classroom when it comes to project organization and production of a team on a projects.

Ubiquity- I like the idea of ubiquity because it allows students to be studious while on the go. Having mobile devices makes it easy for them to stay engaged even when they are not in the classroom.

Deep Learning-Deep learning is extremely important in my opinion because it helps student grasp the ideas and concepts from certain lessons. Using databases to do additional research on a topic is extremely beneficial for the student and their learning. 

Making Things Visible and Discussable-This function is definitely helpful for the visual learners in the classroom such as myself. I like the idea of making things visible for students, because I feel that it helps them grasp the concept better when they can actually see it and discuss it. 

Expressing Ourselves, Sharing Ideas, Building Community-Using blogs, tagging, and other social interaction is a great way for students to bounce ideas off of one another and brainstorm as a community. 

Collaboration- I think collaboration is a huge part of PBL and is one of the reasons why it can be so successful. Collaboration is definitely beneficial for students because it allows them to work together and learn from each other.

Research- Research is great to help students learn more about a topic, but they need to know the right tools that will make researching beneficial for them. 

Project Management- This function is good for students because it will help them learn how to manage their time and keep them more organized in the future. 

Reflection and Iteration- Blogs make it easy for students to look back on their thinking and it is a good way to show how much a student has grown and learned from post to post. 

All of these learning functions listed above will be helpful to our project because students will be engaged with most of them throughout the project.   From the very start of the project, students will brainstorm ideas and collaborate with each other.  They will continue on to make visuals to help display what they have learned.  They will do research and develop deeper learning skills, as well as many more. As future teachers, we will be looking at the "Big Idea" for the project, and this chapter will help us understand what our big idea is. 

Reading Reflection #3

When finding the "Big Idea" for a project, one should consider ways to educate the students than simply through telling them what they need to know or reading the textbook. You should also try to cover more than one subject area and determine engaging ways to learn via Blogs, Wikis, etc. The 21st Century Skills are important to help students develop. If a teacher can successfully implement a well designed project then it causes students to stretch their intellectual muscles in way that traditional learning activities do not. Teacher want to use three high-order thinking skills and they are analyze, evaluate, and create. The framework for 21st Century Learning incorporates core subjects, content, learning and thinking skills, information and communications technology literacy, and life skills. I think that these are very crucial to incorporate into learning and help better prepare our students for their futures. One great way to involve opportunities for learners to become literate in the 21st Century sense of the word is by using true-to-life projects.

There are eight essential learning functions and they are as follows:

• Ubiquity: Find tools that help students be more mobile and learn wherever they want, whenever they want, more frequently, and with whomever they want. 
• Deep Learning: Help students find and make sense of "raw" information on the Web
• Making Things Visible and Discussable: Showing rather than telling!!
• Expressing Ourselves, Sharing Ideas, Building Community: Find ways students can use the Web to express their ideas and build society around shared interests.
• Collaboration-Teaching and Learning With Others: Tools abound that help us learn together.
• Research: Quality directories, search engines with filtering, a variety of bookmark tagging tools, and citation "engines" help students make sense of and organize what they need from ever-expanding Web.
• Project Management-Planning and Organization: Consider Web-based "homepages" or "desktops" that give students a space to work and associated tools to help them plan and organize.
• Reflection and Iteration: Using a blog can serve a s a personal diary or journal, where students put their thinking out on the table to give it a good look and elicit alternate perspectives.

For our topic/project we need to use our topic to cover multiple subject areas and we also need to find reliable sources for students to research the topic. The projects need to help students make sense of information and will give them an opportunity to share their ideas via PenPals. 

Pen Pals Map- South Korea

Although kickball was invented in the US, popularity has exponentially grown in South Korea and taken a new name as balyagu, or foot-baseball. Kickball is a game that requires minimum amount of supplies including a rubber ball about the size of a soccer ball, and four bases that can be composed of anything. We chose to utilize the youth in South Korea to offer our students a different view of a common past time in our country. Although the same basic concepts of the game still exist, some rules may be different including the number of innings, more or less players, and strike outs and it is important to udnerstand the different rules around the world. We created this map to represent the location our students are in and the location of where our pen pals in South Korea are located. This map will help our students comprehend how far away their pen pals are and where exactly they are located in the world. It can also give our students an understanding that many different countries with different cultures can be involved in one common interest.


https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?authuser=0&hl=en&mid=z-q-RaDoCYNo.k6gj5FBszuIk

Assignment IV: Part A

Here is the link for our finalized paper :D

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17wCkBk2mrJyTnM-WUZc9snEqFD5mWL38ZYEtBqKZFdw/edit

Email

sprobenx4@gmail.com

Reading Reflection 2-Ch 2

Learning communities seem to be all about the greater good of the team, whether that be the teachers, the students, or both. Learning communities allow for not only just collaboration between teachers, but brainstorming, peer review, shared responsibility, extra knowledge, and overall more powerful learning. It baffles me that learning communities are not more utilized within the education system for the simple fact that education is constantly changing and evolving. Learning communities seem to allow educators to stay up to date with their trade as well as help other educators do the same. These “teams” formed within schools allow teachers to come outside of their own classroom isolation and to communicate with the people who are in the same shoes as them. Learning communities allow teachers to refresh and rejuvenate their ideas and lessons that may be out dated or need a little bit of tweaking. Learning communities are not only great for the teachers, but the students as well. When teachers in a school are working together towards a common goal, it gives them a stake in the process to the goal. Students learning will not only be fresh and up to date, it will have been “tested” on other teachers therefore hopefully making it the best delivery possible. In a perfect world, educators would have hours to perfect their craft, perfect their lessons and their ideas, but it is not realistic for that to happen in every school. That being said, learning communities can be done in any sort of fashion and it still seems that it will be extremely beneficial to all parties involved. Shared vision is an important part of the idea of learning communities because everyone is working towards the same goal rather then whatever goal they personally have set. A shared vision allows all teachers involved to learn together and utilize problem solving, communication, project management, motivation and persistence to work towards a common goal. Concepts in this chapter relate to our project because in order to come together and create the best possible project that we can, we must work in a professional learning community. If as a group, we can effectively communicate, brainstorm, and utilize each other’s prior knowledge, the possibilities of success are endless. Profession learning communities allow for so many positive experiences and should absolutely be utilized within education more than ever. 

Reading Reflection #1 Intro-Ch 1

Project based learning is the process of teaching students skills to be successful in a n educational setting as well as a real world setting. PBL is about breaking down the traditional barriers and utilizing the plethora of resources we as educators and students have access to enhance and update our teaching techniques to keep up with the world around us. As we start the journey to discover and explore PBL, it’s important that we remember that learning is a lifelong, everyday process, although our formal education will eventually come to an end, our everyday adventures through the world will not. We also need to keep in mind that although we may be educated and intelligent human beings, there is someone out there who knows something we don’t and to discover more knowledge and information, we must effectively socialize and communicate with each other in order to receive said knowledge. The PBL approach will allow students to pursue their own specific interests but also to aid in their peers interests as well therefore giving them a stake in their learning and give it more importance. PBL allows all types of learners to actively participate in the classroom, no matter if you are an auditory learner compared to a visual learner. PBL also allows students to collaborate on work, think critically, and to problem solve with the teacher standing in the background monitoring it all, rather than leading a discussion in the forefront. The benefits are endless because it truly is the process of “shifting the teachers role” from what we all are used to. PBL allows educators to work with small groups and determine what they specifically are struggling with rather than having to move on as an entire group because it “seems like” the majority understands. The only problem or issue that seems to come about with the PBL approach is special education and non-typical learners. Although special education students have a very large range of function, is PBL the best possible learning style for these children who may not even be in the classroom all day? Does PBL truly provide them with the information they need to prosper and succeed or does the social aspect of it exclude them yet again? Overall, PBL the main idea of PBL is to prepare students for the outside world and special education students are included in that. A perfect example of a working PBL model was New Technology High. The first thing that stood out was the smaller class sizes within the school. 100 people per grade and a maximum of 400 for the school truly allows each student to have the chance to develop a relationship with most if not all of their teachers and to feel more at home because of that. New Technology High seems to run like a business does, rather than a school, and that seems to be a good thing. Teachers are given incentives to collaborate with each other rather than just working on their own which in turn will only benefit the students from year to year. New Tech High seems like they really care about learning as whole, rather than just the grades they will receive at the end. Although it is a bit drastic, hopefully one day the majority of our schools can effectively run like New Tech High and all students can come out of their formal educations prepared and ready for the real world.