Reflection 4

     When looking at potential pitfalls of project design there are four major ones to keep in mind.  The first is long on activity and short on learning outcomes.  This means that if the project is busy and long but reaches small or lower order learning aims, it is not worth investing your students' time or yours.  A project should be sized right for what it accomplishes.  The second potential pitfall is technology layered over traditional practice.  Having students research a topic on the internet and then present it in an electronic slideshow is not a quality project.  Decide whether the technology is being used to bring people together, and connecting students to rich data and primary sources, or if it isn't provide some other way to allow students to create unique and high quality learning projects.  The third potential pitfall is trivial thematic units.  When using thematic projects look for ways a theme elevates and connects the learning.  The last potential pitfall is overly scripted with many, many steps.  be wary of over perceptive projects plans that have many discrete steps but have limited possible results.  

     Some features of a good project are that they are loosely designed with the possibility of different learning paths, the are generative, causing students to construct meaning, they center on a driving question or are otherwise structured for inquiry, the capture student interest through complex and compelling real-life or simulated experiences, they are realistic, and therefore cross multiple disciplines, they reach beyond school involve others, they tap rich data or primary sources, they have students working as inquiring experts might, they get at 21st century skills and literacies, including communication, project management, and technology use, they get at important learning dispositions, including persistence, risk taking, confidence, resilience, self-reflection, and cooperation, and they have students learning by doing.  

     Project ideas can come from everywhere, even from a classroom issue.  Problems in everyday life can become the topic for students to research at anytime.  They can also come from ideas off of passed projects that have been successful, they are just changed a little.  

     There are four step when designing a project.  The first is to revisit the framework.  You need to make a list of learning objectives for core subjects and allied disciplines.  Decide which skills you want to address.  The second step is to establish evidence of understanding.  The third is to plan the project theme or challenge.  You should pick something the students would like to research about.  the last step is to plan entree into the project.  What are you going to use to get the students attention. We had to use these skills when we were making our lesson plans.  We had to think of a good project and then we had to make a lesson plan for it with a full list of procedures that we were going to follow.