Some of the items that should be considered before starting a project with students are supplies: what supplies will be needed and where to get them from, resources: what can help you with this project. Each individual student's abilities and proper pairing of the students for the activity for best growth and learning of the students.
When planning a project, there needs to be some prior thought on the management needs for both the teachers and the students. Management may be the most difficult part of complex projects. Teachers need tools for communicating with students as well as for making milestones and events visible and notifying students when change occurs. They also need methods for getting resources to students, systems for managing work products, and assessment tools and strategies. Students also have project-management needs. How they are going to manage their time and flow of work, collaboration tools, how they are going to control materials and work drafts, as well as methods for seeking assistance are all important parts of the students project-management needs.
Some of the technological applications that should be considered for use in a project are: google documents, skype, audio instructions from the teachers, links of resource pages (or hot lists), photographs of students in the class, clocks showing the times of different time zones, flickr, updates from the teacher, multi-media blogs, and wiki's. Using these resources can be very helpful when students are involved in a complex problem. For example, when using Google Documents, students can collaborate even if they are not in the same place. If they are both online, they can watch as one another edits a document. Skype is another helpful internet application. Skype allows the students to communicate with each other or with other their teacher as well as anyone they may be using as a source of information for the project (such as interviewing a professional in the field their project is based).
Concepts in this chapter relate to my project about healthy living because it supplies some valuable resources for us to use in our project. It also demonstrated how much planning goes into the management aspect of a complex problem when being used in a classroom. For example, if I were to plan a project on healthy living with a group of students I would have to research websites and create a “hot list” of the websites I had approved and found suitable for use with the project.
I really liked how you related this reflection so much towards what we are doing in class, especially in the last paragraph about the making of the hot lists. Its important because we do not want our students using websites that we have not approved for safety reasons, and also because they might give incorrect information. I also liked the idea of using skype in the form of interviews based on their project. This allows students to see how technology is used in the real world, as well as what they could have to do one day in the furture.
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