Shelly Henderson - EDT 3470 - Reading Reflection #4

Learning to look at your projects critically will make a huge difference in their success.  There are many potential pitfalls and if you don’t pay attention to them, you could have a project that lacks in many areas.  Keeping your students and the quality of their experience at the forefront of your decision-making will help you design a project that avoids them.  Possible pitfalls include a project that is lengthy and full of busy work.  It may lack in depth and cause students to create products that are very similar from group to group.  The thinking involved here is lower-level, not higher-level.  Another pitfall is when technology is used simply as a means to an end, not as a tool that can help students reach high learning goals.  Often, teachers use themes to guide their lessons.  This can be dangerous in terms of project design because themes don’t automatically help students make connections and elevate their learning.  Themes do have the potential to provide the platform for interdisciplinary lessons, collaborative learning and higher-level thinking.  You just need to be careful when working with them.  Something else to look out for is whether or not the project is largely scripted, and not more open-ended.  You want to avoid a project that is predictable and where students create work that is similar to others.  This pitfall occurs when students aren’t making their own decisions about their learning and taking ownership. 

A good project is one that avoids the above pitfalls and that is driven by the students’ experiences.  Such a project is flexible, allowing for changes along the way where either the students or teachers deem necessary.  Students need to be engaged in the learning, asking their own questions that they want answered, and believing in what they are doing.  The very best projects include these features:  they are flexible and have room for diverse learning paths, they allow the students to construct meaning, they are inquiry based, they engage students because they include real-life experiences, they are interdisciplinary, they involve the greater school and/or community, they tap into primary sources through the use of technology, they give students the opportunity to learn and teach each other, they invite work on 21^st century skills and literacies, and the good projects allow students to take risks in safe environments and learn by doing.  The best projects are owned by the students and guided by the teacher. 

We are surrounded by project ideas!  Anyone willing to do a little looking, even in an area where it doesn’t seem like a project is possible, may be surprised.  I think the saying “don’t reinvent the wheel” is important to consider when designing a project, especially if you are on your own or doing it for the first time.  There are tons of resources out there that can offer ideas, support, guidance, and collaboration.  There are even project plans out there written by teachers for teachers.  Exploring other plans might guide you in creating your own and once you have a successful one, it most likely will lead to another.  Teachers need to be aware of what’s around them and be open to what they may discover. 

There are steps to take when designing your project.  Start by spending some time revisiting the framework you created when considering the “big ideas” and establishing the learning objectives.  Decide on the 21^st century skills you want to focus on, be specific.  Think about what learning skills you want your students to experience and “establish evidence of understanding.”  Start planning the theme or the challenge of your project.  Then examine how you are going to introduce them to the project, how you are going to get them excited and engaged.  Now you are ready to make your “project sketch.”  This is just a brief statement summing up your thoughts so far.  At this point, you should share your sketch with your colleagues and get some critical feedback.  Use them to help you look critically at your plans.  After, you then need to create an “asset map” to organize your resources, materials, etc.  This can even be done with some collaboration and managed with technology.

The ideas in this chapter will be very helpful in creating our project.  I appreciate the step-by-step guidance for creating a PBL project and the rich resources that are offered.  I like being given “permission” to look at other projects, to see how different educators have handled their projects, and to know that there are lots of resources out there so we don’t have to feel alone when working on ours.  I really liked the section on where projects ideas come from.  We are surrounded by possibilities and I feel like this chapter will help us tap into those while staying on track and organized.