Week 7 Reflection - EDTECH 542

The culminating event is over, the project presentations have been presented, groups and peers have been evaluated, reflection journals are in. Is the PBL experience really over? Absolutely not. One of the most powerful forms of assessment and project evaluation is the post project reflection. Use the resources from this week to assist you as you think about how you intend to debrief your PBL experience. Some questions to consider:

• Who will you involve in the process?

I would involve as many constituents as possible in the debrief process. First and foremost, this would involve the students who participated in and completed the project. It could involve the business owners who participated in the feature stories, other colleagues in the English department to provide feedback, or even an administrator who showed interested and supported the project.

• What will your process look like?

The process could be both formal and informal. With the students, there could be a reflection form where they answer specific questions about the project and the process, reflecting on how well group members worked together, and how successfully they executed their objectives. The business owner could receive a phone call, or maybe a card of appreciation for participating in the project. He/she could also be sent a copy of the newspaper feature article, or sent a link of the multimedia presentation and be asked to comment and provide his impressions. With colleagues or administrators, it could be an informal conversation in the hallway, or it could be something more formal, incorporated into a review or evaluation.

• Is it just a one-time assessment?

PBL projects lend themselves to assessment both during the project and after it is completed. Each PBL project can be assessed on its own merits, and the more feedback from constituents that's able to be generated, the greater chance that the project will have to succeed. It's important to realize that there may be hurdles and speed bumps, but that they can be overcome if constituents are open and willing to share their thoughts on both the progress but also possible impediments. It is during instances such as this that the teacher-as-facilitator can work to sooth bumps and possibly redirect the group if necessary. The facilitator needs to be careful about how much feedback and direction is provided, while also understanding that some students may need more assistance and suggestion than others. It's a fine balancing act, and honesty, awareness, and communication by all parties is essential to a PBL project having success.

Week 6 Reflection - EDTECH 542

One of the greatest challenges for an instructor in a PBL unit is to adapt to the role of facilitator. Reflect on the following:

• Will my role in the teaching/learning process change?

 In general, I subscribe to a student-centered pedagogical philosophy, so my role in a PBL unit would be similar. I would provide initial instruction, and then act more like a guide, allowing the students to explore, learn, and take charge of their project. When students have questions, my role isn't to answer them - at least initially - but to point them in the direction where they can discover the solutions themselves.

• What are the skills of effective facilitation?

 An effective facilitator is able to empower his or her students and help them to find the answers they need. A facilitator acts like a "guide on the side," providing support and encouragement, and giving students access to the resources they'll need to succeed.

• Will the students develop the competancies and skills needed to be successful?

Yes, they will, as they're developing real-world skills which can be applied to a variety of situations and learning contexts.

• What changes will you need to make in order to become an effective facilitator in your PBL unit?

I think if my style of teaching relied more on direct instruction aka the "sage on the stage," then I would need to undergo a shift as I transferred some of that authority from myself onto the students. Advising a scholastic newspaper where the students are responsible for all content decisions has prepared me well for the facilitator role I'll need to play when overseeing a PBL project.

Week 5 Reflection - EDTECH 542

Option 1: Designing Integrated Curriculum At some point you may consider including other disciplines in your project (if you haven't already). Watch the video below on Designing Integrated Curriculum and reflect on the benefits of interdisciplinary projects and the challenges in implementing them. How might you go about making this a reality in your school?

I really enjoyed watching the Designing Integrated Curriculum video, as it illustrated the power and potential that's possible when teachers from different disciplines are able to work together. Since I started teaching at my current school, I have been intrigued by the idea of cross-curricular collaborations.

The parallels between history and English are obvious. It would be wonderful to be able to sequence a unit of novel study during the same time that the time period comprising the setting of that novel was being studied in history class. With my 9th grade students, this would mean, for example, reading To Kill a Mockingbird during the time students were studying The Great Depression, and working with American history teachers to create assignments.

With science, opportunities exist for collaboration regarding DNA, cells, and bioresearch, as my AP 11 students must read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a true story about a woman whose cells have been used in research and continue to reproduce. 

In math, as students become more familiar with the Flipped Classroom model, students themselves will begin creating tutorial videos on a variety of mathematical subjects. I could teach those same students strategies for giving effective presentations via video, drawing on speech and communications standards.

The chief obstacle for these collaborations is planning time. Simply put, the educational model that has teachers in the classroom for 80 percent of their day leave no time for curriculum integrations to occur. Until teachers are given planning time to even begin considering such collaborations, they will, unfortunately, never happen. If administrators truly value these kinds of interactions and collaborations in their buildings, they will need to find a way to give their staffs an opportunity to meet, brainstorm, and plan such lessons.

EDTECH 542 Week 4 Reflection

In the Project Based Learning classroom, students can, along with their instructor, develop relevant and meaningful assessments, and play an active role in developing criteria and setting standards of performance for high quality work. Assessments have more meaning for the learner when he/she can take an active part in the formation of the assessment. This concept of assessment-as-learning focuses on what learners achieve--not what teachers provide. Read more about the Key Principles of Effective Assessment.

Discuss how your planned assessments meet the key requirements for effective assessments. Reflect on how you might adjust your teaching during this project to allow more student input in the evaluation process.

Two of my three planned assessments are extremely student initiated. The first form of assessment, "reporter's notes," calls on students to reflect on their writing process and make notes and observation on the highlights and lowlights of their work. The reporter's notes are also designed to help frame the type of feedback students receive from their peers and the instructor. If students are looking for help with particular part of the assignment, they're able to articulate their desires in the reporter's notes, upon which a peer or teacher can then respond.

In my second assessment, students make observations on both the content and style of their writing. A peer or teacher then makes observations, and finally the student records any edits or revisions made. This way, when the final document is assessed, there is a record of feedback and specific actions taken to improve the quality of the piece.

The third assessment is a rubric which the instructor completes, evaluating the final product. One way to make this more student-centered would be for the writer to self-assess the final product. This information would likely be beneficial to the teacher/evaluator.

EDTECH 542 Week 3 Reflection

This week gave us an opportunity to craft our own driving questions as we began to think deeply about our own project based learning activity. My driving question was "What are the qualities and attributes of successful Pioneer Valley small businesses?"

My project will allow students to choose the small business of their choice and interview the owner in hopes of learning what it is that's allowed that business to succeed. I came up for the idea of this driving question after watching an expeditionary learning video about high school students who interviewed people who had been homeless and created a documentary that shed light on the issue. It was very moving.

The video, and subsequent assignment of crafting a driving question, made me recall an assignment I had in one of my college journalism classes, where I had to get out and interview owners of small "niche" businesses to get a sense of what products and services appealed to the college students of Amherst, Massachusetts.

My PBL activity incorporates elements of this, although unlike myself, where I had to interview three businesses and the director of the local chamber of commerce, I would ask my students to focus only on one business, and really get to know its ins and outs.

EDTECH 542 Week 2 Reflection

Week 2 gave us an opportunity to learn more about PBL activities and to view sample projects. It was extremely beneficial to be able to view examples and see the range of possibilities. I remember being particularly impressed by an expeditionary project created by juniors at Casco Bay High School in Portland, Maine called “Give Me Shelter.”

For this project, students interviewed a number of people who had been homeless at various points in their lives, learning more about its causes and conditions. By actually going to people’s homes and speaking with them in their environments, students really got to understand and feel what it was they were researching.

The students then used multimedia tools like cameras, video recorders, and digital voice recorders to capture the sights and sounds of these people. They then used detailed and specific observation notes to record both the stories and the mannerisms, the ticks, the unique elements that make each of these people individuals with their own story, rather than just a class of people falling under the umbrella of “homeless.”

It was fascinating to learn about the process that went into creating this learning opportunity for the students. As someone who teaches a journalism class and advises the school newspaper, I was really excited about the idea of having students get out into the community to talk with people and learn about stories first-hand.

EDTECH 542 Week 1 Reflection

I found it a bit surprising that after eight years as a secondary high school teacher, I hadn't heard about project based learning from any of my colleagues or administrators. In a nutshell, project based learning is a learner-centered instructional strategy which encourages cooperation and group work, resulting in the creation of a project. PBL allows students to make continual, incremental progress, and gets them actively engaged in “doing” rather than “learning about” something meaningful and interesting to them.

Our first module in EDTECH 541 gave us an opportunity to peruse what PBL was all about, and to learn how it could be incorporated into the classroom. If there is one thing I took away from the first week's lessons, it's that PBL is interdisciplinary, and cannot be done successfully in a vacuum. It requires a team of teachers to work together in the creation of PBL activities, and it needs the support of administrators to facilitate the teaching and learning conditions required for meaningful and effective project based learning.

Below is a brief video which explains the basics of PBL: