Reading Reflection 6

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

Technology is such a part of our world today it is almost impossible not to utilize it in not only your day to day life, but in your education as well. Technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths in many ways. The use of blogs and different websites such as Surveymonkey and Zoomerang students are easily able to identify trends and help them track their assessments with the rest of the class. Tools such as these allow students to somewhat compare themselves to their peers enabling them to track their progress, strengths and weaknesses.

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

As with anything, students need to be excited about something in order for them to have a personal stake in it. In order to get student’s minds ready for a project, you need to determine the prior knowledge that they have pertaining to the topic through self-assessments. This will give you a basis on where you need to begin as well as where you need to go. Students need to see that you feel passionate about the project so it is important that you transfer that feeling to them. If they believe that you care about this and it’s outcomes, it is more likely they will. When students have an interest in their learning it becomes more important to them, therefore allowing them to become more involved. Finally, the teacher can build excitement for the project by “planting the seed” in the previous weeks leading up to the start of it. If the students are hearing about the project and it’s aspects more than just the first time you introduce it, it allows them to think openly about it and develop their own ideas.  To get students excited about the project you need to give the project a purpose and allow them to feel that they are truly discovering something new.

3  Discuss the elements of teaching fundamentals first

Teaching the fundamentals first is a crucial ideal for educators in any subject. Everything we learn, we learned the basics first in order to understand the more complicated ideas, building blocks make the final project. Fundamentals are important in projects because they allow the students to be introduced to the aspects of the project but not in an overwhelming way. In order to know where the project is going to need to know where your students are starting. A great resource mentioned in the book is having children create wikis alone, with a partner, and with another child from another class. This activity allows students to take their ideas and expand them not once, but twice therefore “perfecting” them.

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

Technology is a huge resource for our students to utilize during the project process but it is important that we are using it the best we can. Utilizing technology requires planning by the teacher in order to determine which technology can be best utilized and what the students will be familiar with. The most important thing is to consider yourself a student and try to navigate through the technology that you want them to use. You need to discover and research each piece of technology and determine if it is easy or difficult to understand as a student because if it is not, you then have to determine if it worth using.

5              Discuss ways to promote inquiry and deep learning.

Projects are great things for children to explore and investigate different topics and ideas, which in turn will lead to inquiry and deep learning. When students have a stake in their learning they truly are interested in all aspects of it therefore allowing them to investigate it more in depth. As a teacher it is your job to create an experience for the children to discover and learn new things project based learning allows them to learn hands on. It is important for students to utilize what they learn within the classroom and apply it to their own lives and what they know outside of school as well.

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

The topics in this chapter relate to our project because it’s all about creating a deeper understanding of a “simple topic” Kickball is a sport that many people know about and have most likely played before, but by examining the different health aspects of it you are giving more meaning to the project.