Sarah Hughey's Reading Response #5

1. Discussion on the items that should be considered before starting a project with students.
2. Discussion on teachers’ and students’ management needs.
3. Discuss some of the technology applications that should be considered for use in a project.
4. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

1.  The items and people that should be considered before starting a project with students are materials, use/access of technology, any experts that should be consulted, who else can help with the project, and how responsibilities will be divided between the teachers if it is a collaborative project between classrooms.

2.  Students need to manage their time wisely.  To help with this, a project calendar with milestones and visual deadlines helps students keep better time management skills.  This calendar can either be a low-tech literal calendar on the board or one that's online.  If having a project that spans across many weeks, it helps students to have it broken down into manageable pieces and smaller deadlines so they are not overwhelmed.  It is also beneficial for parents to be aware of these deadlines and have access to the calendar so they can help their students and simply be in the know.  Both teachers and students have a management need of organizing the project.  Learning management systems online can help with this, as students can have access to their work wherever they have internet and teachers can view student in-progress work and be aware of any needs out there.  Teachers also need to manage the teams and mix them up every so often while matching students together who will work well together.  Finally, teachers have to plan for assessment and will have to manage multiple assessments and feedback methods throughout a single PBL project.

Tools that teachers need for management are tools for communicating about the project and changes about the project, tools for making milestones/events such as deadlines available for viewing, methods for giving students resources, systems for managing work products, structures supporting a healthy learning environment, and assessment tools and strategies.  Tools that students need for management are time-management tools/systems, systems to manage materials/drafts, methods for asking for guidance, methods to get feedback from themselves and others, and ways to see how everything comes together.

3. Some of the technology applications that should be considered for use in a project include a wiki (esp. the "Flat Classroom" wiki), a blog, a "desktop" application, and personalized web pages (ex. either an actual website or a "home page"/"startpage" that many browsers and e-mail services offer).  Page sharing in particular between students, teachers, and parents can be beneficial.

4.  These concepts are very relate-able to our project.  For one, being more aware of our and our students' management needs will help us design our project in order to ensure that nobody is frustrated due to a lack of management tools and to make sure we can efficiently get our work done.  We also need to incorporate the various items and people that the chapter suggested rather than just only coming up with an idea, and being in a technology in the classroom course means that we need to also consider how to incorporate technology applications in a meaningful way.