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.