Reading Reflection #4

Abby Harrop

 Reading Reflection #4

1. With a lot of things, there can be some downsides to a concept or idea, and project design also has its pitfalls. There are 4 main ones. The first one is long on activity, short on learning, which means that you have to be careful not to spend too much time on a project if the thing being learned is minor or would not take long to teach students in other lessons. The second is technology layered over traditional practice which is when teachers use technology just to add it for things that it may not be needed, and not getting to the true meaning of project based learning. The third is trivial thematic units, and lastly overly scripted with many, many steps. Projects need to allow for critical decisions for students to make on their own instead of having too many steps.

 2. Although there are some pitfalls, many projects can succeed very nicely. There are many features of good projects. Some of those are that they reach beyond school to involve others, tap rich data or primary sources, they are centered on a driving question or structured for inquiry, they are realistic, therefore crossing multiple disciplines, they have students working as inquiry experts might, they are structured so students learn with and from each other, among others. There are many signs of a good project to look for and see why it is successful.

 3. Project ideas can come from many places such as from student question in the classroom or interest, news stories, contemporary issues, project plans by other teachers, and many more. Good projects can be found everywhere.

 4. The steps to design a project are as follows: 1. Design the project, revisit the framework by making a list of objectives and disciplines, decide on the specific 21st-century skills needed to be addressed, and identify learning dispositions you want to foster such as persistence of reflection. Then you must establish evidence of understanding, what do you want the students to be able to know or do after and through the project? Plan the project, theme, or challenge; what do you want students to do? Inquire about something, create, do? Etc. Plan entrée into the project experience, this is thinking about how you will get students’ attention, make them excited about the project, and want them to learn more.

 5. We have to understand when we are working on our own personal problems the different steps to creating projects; what order to do them in, what we need to think about, etc. We also have to be aware of the pitfalls that can occur. When we are familiar with what they may be, we may be able to avoid them and overcome them if we face them. It is also good to see what is a good feature of a project so we know if projects we create are beneficial and working or not.