Chapter 11

I have traveled a long distance on this journey. Because I have not yet taught in a classroom this book gives me great insights to creating and implementing projects into my classroom. I feel better about using projects in the classroom, and about creating projects for my students. I like how the book went about relaying the message of first you need to research and layout he projects you are thinking about. Then you need to create the project and bounce ideas off other teachers. Then you can bring the project into the classroom. Then as a teacher reflect on the project, and how your students handled the project. Then continue to improve the project and make it better. I believe that my students will benefit from what I have learned because I will create better projects for them. This will give them a better opportunity to further their learning.

Chapter 10

I am not yet teaching in the classroom, however, I would like to regularly make time for student reflection in the classroom. I think that the students can learn a lot from reflection, and it can give the teacher an idea of how their teaching methods are working or not working. I think that to make sure reflection is meaningful for my students would be to explain to them the purpose for reflection, and that all their experiences good or bad they can learn from. And reflection is a way to see what they have learned. I would like to use blogging in my classroom. I think another good way for reflection would be to have them create a Microsoft Word reflection document because some students might not want others reading what they reflect about.

Chapter 8 & 9

I believe that a good way to prepare the students is to have them discuss questions they would like to ask the expert before the meeting with the expert. After getting the questions from the students the teacher can then send the questions that might be asked to the expert. Also, talking to the expert about what you would like them to talk about would be helpful. It is hard to imagine how students would react to the kind of “buzz” the Flat Classroom Project created. I think that each student would react in a different way.
I have not taught in a classroom so I am not sure which role students fit in as consumers or producers. However, as a student myself I would say that I am a producer. For my classes I have had to produce many projects, papers, and presentation. I could also see that students could be more familiar with the role of the consumer because students spending more and more money, and not their own money but their parents money. I think that a good way to measure the distance of each student as a learner would be through a portfolio or e-portfolio. I think that creating a portfolio full of the students work over a year or a few years is a good way to measure and show the student what they have learned.

Chapters 6 & 7

I have not yet experienced developing rubrics with my students. I have just begun to develop rubrics for the lesson plans and projects I have been preparing for my classes I am attending. I have figured out that it is important to make rubrics very clear, and should say what the objectives of the project are. I hope to build my students foundation skills through classroom activities. I hope that the students will already have some skills needed to complete successful projects, however, I need to be prepared to teach them all skills needed.
“The art of teaching” to me means that there are many forms and methods to go about teaching. Every teacher will have their own “art of teaching”. I believe it is important as a teacher to be creative and to set high expectations for themselves as teachers. I have not yet taught in a classroom so I have not implemented strategies or tried out any to keep the classroom on course with many conversations happening at once. I do think that a good strategy would be for the teacher to walk around the classroom discussing with students their projects, and helping guide them with their conversations. I think that a away for students to share their challenges and/or setbacks would be to let them write reflections on their experiences. I believe that reflection is an important learning tool that can help the students and the teacher gain a better understand of the work accomplished.

Chapters 3,4,5

Imagining the possibilities for a project are endless. If I just think about what kind of projects are possible for me to implement today because of technology that I would have never been able to do when I was a student is exhilarating. I like the idea of a project where the students must make a video, and post it online. The video can be anything from expensive video equipment to a digital camera with video. I expect that using the project approach the students will showcase their skills and knowledge with great work because they will be more interested and enthusiastic about doing the work. I also believe that as the teacher I will have more work to do with guiding them in the right direction with their projects, and more work brainstorming how to implement the project and create great instructions and rubric to make the directions clear for the students. I think that the overlap between disciplines do make some projects great. I think it also helps the students learn how to connect all the knowledge and skills they are learning throughout their schooling. They are going to go into the workforce and have to use many of the skills and knowledge all at once. The projects that cross disciples can also help students see certain aspects in a different light and thus gain a better understanding of information and skill.
I have not yet practiced my teaching in a classroom; therefore I have not encountered any of the “project pitfalls” in the classroom. However, through creating projects for my school assignments I have encountered that it is easy to overly script the project with many steps. It is hard for me to keep the steps down and leave room for the students to be creative with their work and showcase their skills and knowledge. I think that it will help when I can go into a classroom and try out projects to get a feel for how much structure is needed. I think that the suggestion for optimal ambiguity is going to be hard to find. I think that optimal ambiguity will be different for every project, and maybe different for every class. I imagine that my students will respond well to a project that is structured but also gives them flexibility to be creative. I think it is important to let the students take their projects and make them their own.
I believe that the use of multiple assessment methods is very important. I believe that it gives students a better opportunity to show their true skills and knowledge, and give the teacher a better representation of the students work. I think that it is very important to have the students assess their own progress and reflect on what they have done. Self assessment and reflection can give the students a great understanding of how they are doing, and what they need to work on. They can gain more knowledge from assessing themselves and their peers. The feature that is desirable to me from the technology focus the use of a learning management system (LMS). I believe that a LMS is a great tool that can be very beneficial to the students and the teacher. It would be a great way of to open communication between students and between students and the teacher. It can also be good for students to easily retrieve information outside of the classroom.

Mapping My Journey

I am just beginning my journey into the teaching world. Growing up I never thought about being a teacher. I don't really remember thinking about any career I wanted to pursue other than being a professional soccer player. My life revolved around sports. I love sports, and when I went to college I decided that I was going into the sports management field. I thought that I would be able to work at a big major league stadium or be in charge of a recreation center. But my path started to change in my first semester. I took a intro to business management class for a graduation requirement, and I became intrigued with business. The next semester I made business management my second major and realized that if I did this I would be able to work in any business field sports or non-sports related. However, as I continued on my path as a student I began to think about teaching. And when the economy started to decline, I decided that I wanted to teach business. I had coached soccer camps since I was in high school ever summer, and I loved coaching. So I feel like I would be a great teacher, and I could coach as well. I believe that people need to be better educated about business and finance. I am motivated to take this trip to become a teacher to help people become better educated. The main reason I am prompted to consider new approaches for teaching and learning is from my experience as a student at Guilford College. I had an extraordinary journey as a student at Guilford. The school was based on new approaches to learning. I learned from the entire community of the college. The professors would give out projects and research papers that involved me deciding what I wanted to do. I learned from my classmates projects, and from their feedback on mine. All my classes revolved around class discussions led by both the professors and sometimes the students. I experienced what it is like to lead a class discussion, to research a topic that I wanted to learn about, to do an analysis on a real corporation using factual evidence, and to buy and sell real stocks in a simulation based on what the stocks were actually doing. I had the wonderful opportunity to learn in a student based learning environment. I know how much can be learned in this type of environment. I get excited just thinking about how much students can learn in this environment, and how much fun they can have learning. I am beginning to see that there is so many more tools I can use to create an even better learning environment for my future students.
I have started learning about new tools that can be used in the classroom from our readings, and from our assignments. I have learned about Google Docs and the services it provides from the Appendix A of Boss & Krauss's book, Reinventing Project-Based Learning. I did not know of any services like Google Docs even existed. I am also new to the blogging world, and I understand how it can be very useful in the classroom for my students and for my continued learning. Also, I am a newbie to the bookmarking websites like delicious. I am excited about what I am learning and I am looking forward to learning about the new tools and information I can use within my classroom.

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