Reading Reflection Chapter 6

Technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strategies by providing them with opportunities to build their awareness of the skills they need and have.  Some examples of this include the use of blogs which give students the opportunity to have their own space to reflect on what they are learning and they can post as often as they want and the length of the post can be up to them giving them control of their learning. Another example is using tools like SurveyMonkey which allow teachers to set up surveys online that students can see how they compare to other and it can also be a way for teachers to get fast feedback on how students are doing. Encouraging students is a hard task sometimes but getting and preparing students minds for a project is another task teachers are faced with. There are many ways to get students minds ready for a project but some ways I think would work would be using a KWL chart because it starts with what the students prior knowledge is, teachers find out what they want to know/learn, and then finally after the project is complete what they learned. Using KWL charts is something that I have done before and it has been successful every time. Asking student’s questions or having them respond by writing out what they know to the given topic is another way to see what students know before starting a project. There are many ways and it is important for the teacher to find the one that works best with their class. The elements of teaching fundamentals first are important because students need to understand what is expected and what the goal of the project is before they start it and before it gets to far in to it and they are lost. The important steps in preparing students for using technology in a project include the following: setting up a technology playground, tap student expertise, introduce project-management tools, and lastly demonstrate. All of the steps are important in creating a project that works for your students and encourages learning at a higher level of thinking and understanding. There are many ways to promote inquiry and deep learning include guiding students, encouraging students to ask questions, and promoting questioning that will promote students to think deeper and more into the project. Something important I found from this chapter was on page 95, “the act of self-assessment causes students to think about their capabilities and how they direct their own learning”.  This was something that stuck out to me as I read because assessing what students know before the assignment or project and then after with questioning or other progress monitoring techniques are important because it teaches students to reflect and to think about their learning and also about how they learn. Assessment was a focus in my education and I think it was designed that way because of the high importance it holds for teachers and students. This relates to my groups project because we are continually looking for ways to assess our students and for our project ways to see that they know and understand the concept being learned. This chapter was interesting to read and as always interesting to see how it connects in with project based learning and everything we are learning in class.