Reading Reflection #5

Abby Harrop

EDT

Reading Reflection #5

1. When first starting a project with students you, as a teacher, must prepare beforehand. You need to make sure you have all the materials that you need, and if you don’t, for you to go and get them in order to proceed. You need to make sure you know if the technologies required for the project are new to the students or not. If they are unfamiliar, make sure you set aside time and plan to introduce the technology and tools for the students. Think about whether the students will have questions during the project and there are appropriate people and experts available for them to approach and ask. Next, plan and look into anyone who can help and aid with the project, such as a media specialist, technology coordinator, among others. Finally, plan and think about how you will divide responsibilities within the group who are going to work collaboratively together.

2. Teachers and students both have management needs. Teachers’ needs are:

·       Tools for communicating with students and others about the project

·       Tools for making milestones and events visible for notifying students when changed occur

·       Methods for getting resources to students

·       Systems for managing work products

·       Structures that support a productive learning environment in which teams and individuals are engaged in a variety of learning tasks at the same time

·       Assessment tools and strategies including
-ways to gauge whether students are working productively and accomplishing project
-ways to assess the load balance within a team so no individuals end up doing too much or too little
-ways to give just-in-time feedback on student work as it develops, not just when it’s completed

Students’ management needs are:

·       Systems and tools that help them manage their time and flow of work

·       Systems that help students manage materials and control work drafts

·       Collaboration tools

·       Methods for seeking assistance

·       Ways to get and use feedback on their work, through self-reflection, team input, and teacher advice

·       Ways to work iteratively and to see how parts add up to the whole

3. Some applications that should be considered are wiki, an easily edited Web page. A blog, which is a Web page, but has less of a free-for-all, and has great tools for communicating about progress or milestones and to broadcast news related to the project. There is also Drupal and Texpattern, which are more sophisticated Web spaces which combine content management with blogging engine.

4. This can be relatable to our project because we are using a blog, which allows us to communicate with one another and share any news we may need to get across. It shows us how we can possibly implement and use blogging into our future classrooms and see how we like it and if we could manage it.