Stephanie Hill

Reading Reflection #5

            Chapter five begins by discussing which items should be considered before starting a project with students.  First, teachers should take another look at their assets inventory and think about how specific resources could support this project.  Teachers shouldnt look past their community or parents to help out with the materials needed for this project as well.  I really like the idea of sending out an email to parents about donating materials because allows the parents to be involved in the project and keeps the costs down.  Also, teachers should plan on explaining unfamiliar tools to your students.  With new projects, it is highly likely that the students will be unfamiliar how to use some or more tools so it is important to plan ahead.

            Being an efficient t manger or your time as a teacher will demonstrate to children that they are cable of doing the same as a student.  Planning milestones is one of the ways that this chapter suggests will help students understand when they are expected to have specific parts of a project done.  I think that giving children milestones throughout a project is effective because it will give them more opportunities to see what they have accomplished rather than waiting until th end of a project.  The students will also gain confidence with milestones and can also learn from their mistakes if they made any in the beginning. 

            Specifically, teachers have several management needs; tools for communicating with students and others about the project, tools for making milestones and events visible and for notifying students when changes occur, methods for getting resources to students and systems for managing work products.  Students also have project management needs; systems and tools that help them manage their time and flow of work, systems that help students manage materials and control work drafts, collaboration tools, methods for seeking assistance, ways to get and use feedback on their work, through self-reflection, team input, and teacher advice and ways to work iteratively and to see how parts add up to the whole.

Some of the applications that should be considered in this project are a wiki a blog or a Drupal and Textpattern.   I personally think that the wiki is very useful because students can edit each others work and collaborate on ideas, which allows students to work in teams.  Also, wiki gives the possibility of working with many different ideas, giving every student the opportunity to express themselves.

            This chapter gave me a variety of ideas on how to approach my project for Gardening in the Classroom.  I realized that it is important for not only teachers to prepare for a new project but students need to prepare as well. I would use wiki for my project by having students collaborate e together to decided what type of garden they would like.  This way, each students opipion is expressed and valued.