Chapter 11 discussed many ways in which we can “bring the
project home”. One of the ideas mentioned was to build time in for reflection
at the end of your project. This not only benefits our students but us for
future projects. As the book mentions we have already invested so much time
into the project that we need to take that time at the end to identify what grabbed
the students’ attention, what went wrong, and what we could do to improve the
lesson (p.159-160). This will make the next project smoother and will lead to new areas of
exploration. You should also take time to critique your work. They suggest
debriefing with your colleges over your students work. Together you can search
for evidence of understanding. One good idea is reviewing the student’s blog post,
which provides insight to their growth. Boss and Krauss suggest you share your
projects and insights with other teachers. Some ways to do so are by using
iEARN or Global SchoolNet, Create a project library, turn it into an archive on
the web, or publish your project (even enter it in a contest). Other ways are
to turn it into a professional development opportunity for your colleagues. One
good point on this recommendation is to start small and grow from their comfort
level.
When we use the project based learning approach with our
students it is a dynamic approach to teaching in which our students explore
real world problems, simultaneously developing cross curricular skills all
while learning to collaborate with other students. As a result of project based
learning, students become actively engaged in the learning process and develop
a deeper understanding of the content. They also learn communication, organization,
and research skills, and develop confidence in their abilities.
The concepts from this chapter that relate to my project
are the fact that we reflect on thinking through blog post, when we learn new
technology we start small and build up, and we published our work. Although I
strongly agree with teacher collaboration and honestly believe our website will
be a great resource for teachers, I am a bit uneasy putting my work in a public
domain for all to steal. That being said, we all have had those students in our
education classes that do not do the work yet still pass the class. I will admit
I spent days on my lessons and the thought of others using my hard work as
their own ticks me off. Rant over…
I agree that reflection needs to be done at the end of a project. Critiquing your work is important so you can improve on the next project. Collaborating with other students is an important skill to learn because in the workforce this is something that you will have to be able to do. I think students develop a deeper understanding of content material through the project based learning approach. Real like skills are learned like collaboration and organization.
ReplyDeleteApril, your discussion on this last chapter was very interesting to read. I agree with you when you said that teachers need to reflect at the end of the project and how important the reflection process is just in general. This was something that I also discussed in my post as reflections help in so many ways and can show a teacher important things like what worked, didn't, what should be done differently and other things but all of those things build into making the project a tradition as we learned in previous chapters. Collaboration is also an important part not only with students but with other teachers as well and the collaboration does not end when the project is complete it extends on after which is important to finishing up the project and helping to make it a tradition. I have enjoyed this book as I can see myself implementing project based learning now in my classroom one day.
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