Reading Reflection: Chapter 10

1. Reflection time is an important thing in many things, projects being one of them. It allows you to take a look at what you have accomplished so far, what more you have to do, and see if there is any adjustments you need to make.

2. Allowing the students to reflect and elaborate not only lets them see what they have accomplished, but it allows the students to think about where they want to go, and all the possibilities they can take. 

3. Schools build their identity and traditions with certain goals and philosophies in mind.  They mold the schools character and that builds on the staff and students. 

4. Students want to show off their work and share their accomplishments and hard work. It also helps them to reflect and revisit what they did learn, creating them to keep using and remembering their learned knowledge. 

5. Reflecting is a great tool to use to see how far you've come and how far you need to go.  We as a group have had to reflect and it has helped throughout our progress this semester.  

Reflection 11

1. A result of using project based learning is that students are able to do projects that require them to do a lot of hands on work. Meaning that instead of just typing a paper, project based learning requires them to be innovative with how they present information to others. Through the use of technology PowerPoint, Excel, and others. Students gain experience with teamwork on projects, as well as furthering their knowledge with technology.
2. You can "bring your project home" by putting something personal with your project. By making an emotional connection to your project you give a real life sense of how important it is. This "brings it home" because it makes the audience sees that your project actually effect or has effected you in some way.
3. This is important to our project as we need to find a way to "bring our project home" to our audience, by making an emotional connection to it. As a former athletic trainer I brought personal experiences that I have seen/heard and made a connection to our parts about fitness and anatomy. We also see the benefits of PBL in that we have grown in our knowledge/understanding of technology.

Reflection #10

1. Setting aside time for reflection is key in any subject or project. The reason being that by setting time aside to reflect on your daily progress allows you to see what you have done well, not so well, and what else you need to do. This helps relieve stress and helps you look at future stuff that needs to get done.
2. Students need to reflect and elaborate because it allows them the chance to look at how they and their peers are doing on projects or subjects. Students need to elaborate because it gives them the chance to confer with their peers or teachers about information and what needs to happen.
3. Schools build tradition and identity by adapting certain methods or philosophy of teaching within their schools. Some schools may take a more hands on project based learning approach and build their identity that way. Or some schools may go a different route. It is up to the schools faculty to adapt their own identity, as it can't be assigned or given.
4. It is important to celebrate a project because it gives the students a sense of satisfaction that they completed a big task. By celebrating this, you raise their self-esteem and make them more confident going into further projects.
5. This chapter is important to our project because we have weekly reflections about our project. We quite literally set aside time to look back at how we are doing on our project, as well as look at what we did well, not well, and what else we need to do.

Reading Reflection: Chapter 9

1.  Have the students take out a piece of paper.  Ask them questions about the topic they will be learning about, some specific and some vague questions so you can see what they already know. 

2.  As a teacher, establishing anchors helps you to gain a sense of where your students are starting at and how far they are as they're working towards their learning goals.

3. A great way to assess them is to give them homework after you have taught them something and to see what they gained from it.  A few others ways to assess would be quizzes, a jeopardy game, and a personal conference to check in on their knowledge. 

4. This chapter relates greatly to our project.  We had prior knowledge about fitness and things within that topic.  Assessing the students is also something we have involved in our project lessons to asses the students knowledge and what they've learned. 

Reading Reflection #9

1. A method for understanding students prior knowledge on a subject, or particular project is very simple. You can give them a sheet of paper with the topic or subject, and have them write down as much information about it as they can. This allows you to see where each student is at with their prior knowledge of the topic. If they have a lot or little information is irrelevant as a project or unit plan would benefit them all.
2. Establishing anchors for a project is very important because it allows you as the teacher to have information that will be instilled in your students mind for a long time. Much like a real anchor, it makes sure a boat stays put. Information in a project or unit plan does the same, as it stays put in your brain, which is very important as a teacher to have in students. It is crucial for their success.
3. You can assess your students on what they learned during their project, by doing weekly assessments on what they have so far. You can also do weekly progress reports, in which they give you details about what they have so far in their project. You can even simply talk to them and have them explain certain key points about their project.
4. These concepts can be focused on our project, as we chose our topic based upon prior knowledge of not only the information but our prior knowledge of how to use PowerPoint, blogs, websites. We are also creating assessments in our lesson plans to make sure our students retain information.

Reading Reflection: Chapter 8

1. Building connections and branching out beyond the classroom is a great tool to expand on what the students have been doing, get other ideas through exchanging videos, blogs, etc.  It helps them to gain more knowledge on a topic and work on networking with others. 

2. The EAST Initiative model stands for Environmental and Spatial Technologies.  It focuses on learning through technology, but the initiative looks more at realistic problems and practical problems for projects, allowing them to be better prepped. 

3. Letting students "lead" their projects has many beneficial reasons.  It gets the students to work on their leadership skills, working with others as a leader such as in the working world, it also helps confidence and public speaking. 

4.  This chapters concepts such as "leading projects" and branching out are some things we have had to do and are doing with our project.  We are the leaders of our project and in doing so we've had to branch out, expand our knowledge and have sought out information.

Reflection #8

1.Building connections and branching outside the classroom is vital to every student in your class. The reason being that this allows students to take their knowledge learned in the class and use it in the outside world. One way you can help draw connections and foster them branching out, is by having projects based upon real-world problems. As well as projects that have students explore their community, this allows them to connect what they are learning such as liner regression and apply it to the local car dealership.
2. The EAST Initiative model is much like project-based learning in that it is in part focused on learning through the use of technology. However this initiative looks more at practical and realistic problems for their projects. This allows them to be better prepared for college and the adult workplace.
3. Students should be allowed to lead their projects because it promotes leadership, realistic work environment, as well as promotes public speaking. By letting students lead their projects you allow them to get the experience of leading a educating presentation to their peers much like in the workplace. You also allow them to work on their public speaking, and possibly concurring their fear of it.
4. This chapter relates to our project in that we are building connections and branching out from what we have learned in this class to the outside world. We have learned how to blog and have created one and branched it out to the world around us and students in school. We also have to lead our projects, which allows us to work on our ability to present information in a formal education manner to our peers.

Reading Reflection: Chapter 7

1.  The books touches on three types of levels for classroom discussions: Teacher to teacher which is the teachers efforts that went into project planning, student to student which is peers discussing their learning experiences as they unfold, and teacher to student which is working with the whole class but more often smaller groups of students. 

2.  For the "checking in" questions while students are doing their projects, there is procedural, teamwork, understanding, and self-assessment used to "check in" throughout the course of the project. 

3. There are a great deal of benefits using technology! Finding correct sources with valid and useful data is a big help rather than using a book.  Grammatical errors are fixed within Microsoft Word among others, as well as the different presentation options and choices one can use with using technology.

4. The 21st-century skills that can make or break ones project is technology.  The knowledge you have about different technologies and their uses can either help you or hurt you.  Elders who did not grow up with the same technology have had to learn and adjust.  That is one benefit as a young child, now technology is everywhere and being used daily, therefore it is more prominent and around more to learn and use.

5.  For our project, it is important that both Jeff and myself listen and learn about all the technology that we can and are using within our project. It is important, if we do not know already how to use it, to pay attention, retain the information, and put it to use!

reading reflection #7

1. There are several different levels of classroom discussions, such as individual peer-to-peer discussion in which students discuss topics with their peers. There is student to teacher discussions in which the teacher discusses information with students, and there is also teacher to group discussions in which teachers meet with groups about stuff.
2.The questions for checking in with students are designed to measure their current progress with their projects. These questions should be simple because they serve as measuring sticks to their progress. You can also ask them more in depth questions about their project at different points in the project period to see where their project is going in terms of content.
3. The benefits to optimizing technology in the classroom, is that they can get several pieces of data for their projects. It can also serve as a grammar tool to students with the spelling of words. Technology also benefits students in that it makes presenting to their peers easier, as they can do different presentation designs, rather than sticking to a poster-board.
4. The 21st skills that make or break a project is that of technology literacy. Meaning that if you aren't able to work different forms of technology in today's classroom, then you won't be able to find or put information into a presentation. You nee to be able to work technology such as internet search engines as well as PowerPoint.
5. This chapter is important to my project, as my partner and I need to be able to have the 21st century skill of computer literacy to find and put information into our project. We also need to be able to check in with our professor to let her know our progress.