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.