Thursday, November 1, 2012

chpt 7 reading reflection


Chapter 7 discusses "keeping a project moving" in a variety of aspects.  To begin, there are three levels of a classroom discussion.  The first level-teacher to teacher, talks about how teachers need to make it a priority to meeting with each other, ask each other questions, concerns, ideas, strengths and weakness of project thus far and changes they would like to make.  I agree with this highly because it is important to keep each other up to date and solve issues as soon as they occur.  The second level is student to student, which allows students to learn to work in groups, stare their thoughts with their peers and learn how to listen to one another's ideas.  Students working with each other is a crucial skill that they need to have in their future.  The third level is teacher to student, this is idea for practicing your own listening skills and working in small groups to get a better feeling and understanding of your students work. 
"checking in" refers to four main topics- procedural, teamwork, understanding and self-assessment.  Each of these are equally important and cause children to succeed if done correctly.  Procedural deals with making sure that everything is going smoothly and on-time, and if the overall "check-list" of the project is being completed.  Next is the teamwork, this "check-in" makes sure that everyone in the group is working well with each other, listening to each other and making sure to ask for help when need be.  The third is understanding, which involves "spying" as I like to say on your students.  This means that you are making sure that your students are on-task, listening to their conversations and ideas.  The final "check-in" is self-assessment, encourage your students to reflect on their effort(s) throughout the project, what they could have done differently and what they would do next time.
          The benefits that students have when the optimize technology is that your students can gain new insight into how to communicate with culturally diverse audiences  this is done using podcast.  Also, students can learn new skills, able to be flexible with new ideas and are able to listen to their peers ideas more effectively.
          There are several 21st skills that can make or break a project.  Questions for inquiry allow students to challenge themselves by giving them the responsibility of the expert. Students need to be confident in what they are explaining to their peers and able to ask specific questions to the given subject.  If students do not fully understand something or are unable to prove their ideas, they will be unable to convince their peers or use the technology correctly. Also, troubleshooting is another 21st skill.  This shows students that problems/conflicts happen when working on a project and it is your job to fix it and be successful.  If a student does not know to be an effective project manager, they will have many issues while using technology or when conflicts arise.  Lastly, managing conflict is very important.  When students learn to work together, they are able to be successful and learn from one another.  However, if their are bad group dynamics, an entire project could fall apart simply because members of the group could not get along.
          This chapter relates to my project in various ways.  I liked the example of the “check in” because it reminded me that I cannot forget the small details, such as being the “spy” when children are working in their groups and encouraging students to talk with one another and think by themselves what they would do differently next project.  

2 comments:

  1. I agree that this chapter does relate to our project in many ways, especially the example of checking in. "checking in" refers to four main topics- procedural, teamwork, understanding and self-assessment each of these are equally important and cause children to succeed if done correctly. I really like the idea of being a "spy" to make sure everything is going right.

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  2. My favorite aspect of this chapter was the "teacher to teacher" classroom discussion. I feel that it takes a lot for people in general to go to others to receive corrective criticism. I know, for me personally, that I have a hard time with peer review with papers and such- which I know is somewhat different- but the point of peer review is to make it the best. In this instance, by getting peer review from other teachers, the students are benefitting from the consultation because the lessons are becoming better than they would have been. By getting other teachers opinions, concerns, and comments, we are able to see points we never would have thought about which may hold important value that could have been overseen.

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