Enjoy your fall break no matter where you will be. If you are going to Jacksonville, safe trip!
Happy Halloween!
SHOULD
Make sure that you have a draft plan for your LAD project for the presentation on Nov. 6. (A draft can be a one page summary about what you have done and what you plan to do; a demo of your site…show something, don’t just say “we plan to do XXXX…”)
MUST
SHARE your site AND Google Doc with me TODAY (No later than this weekend).
Come back on Nov. 4 to learn about SmartBoard! Guest speaker Emily Hodge will be here!
Keep working on the LAD project. I will check with all of you as well. Again, remember the timeline!
Oct. 28 and 30– I will be in CA for a conference. Don’t need to come to class. BUT MEET YOUR PARTNERS TO WORK ON THE PROJECT. Nov. 6 and 8– Short Presentation for your LAD project progress for peers to give you feedback. Nov. 18, 20, 22– Final Presentation for your LAD Project.
FOR FRIDAY:
COULD
Keep the document of your LAD project.
SHOULD
Make your timeline for the LAD project with your partner(s).
MUST
Keep working on your LAD Project and be creative in the project. Make it a fun learning activity!
See.Touch.Learn— Create your own lesson/ picture cards (good for specialists)
PART II: LAD Project
Keep working on your LAD Project. Make sure that you will develop the draft before November 4. All of you will come with the draft on November 4 for a short presentation to your peers.
DOCUMENTATION of LAD Project
Don’t forget that you need to keep a documentation of your LAD project. This documentation is all about your learnings, frustrations, successes, etc. In order to document your progress, you will need to write about your experience with the project. You need to record your documentation in your blog. You and your partner(s) need to “post” at least one documentation entry every week.
PART III: TIMELINE CHANGE
Oct. 28 and 30– I will be in CA for a conference. Don’t need to come to class. BUT MEET YOUR PARTNERS TO WORK ON THE PROJECT. Nov. 6 and 8– Short Presentation for your LAD project progress for peers to give you feedback. Nov. 18, 20, 22– Final Presentation for your LAD Project.
FOR WEDNESDAY:
COULD
Keep the dcoument of your LAD project.
SHOULD
Make your timeline for the LAD project with your partner(s).
MUST
Keep working on your LAD Project and be creative in the project. Make it a fun learning activity!
You will be assigned to different groups to read and comment on your group members’ blog posts (reflection 7-8). Make MEANINGFUL COMMENTS as well, please. After that, you need to read the comments from others and respond to their comments.
What am I going to say to my peers?
Give comments on their ideas, thoughts, choices of images…etc.
Tell them whether you agree or disagree with them. Why?
Can you give them some new ideas or directions to think about the topic?
Ask a question you have about your partners’ reflections
Find ONE QUOTE from your partners’ reflections…
FOR MONDAY:
COULD
Cheer for Dawgs!!
Come to the yard sale held by Campus Cat. So kitties will have food! If you are interested, check with me.
SHOULD
Enjoy your week off for reflection and keep working on your LAD project!
MUST
Keep working on your LAD Project and be creative in the project. Make it a fun learning activity!
I think Google Site will be a better choice than WordPress. However, if you are good at designing WordPress website, you can choose to stay with WordPress. Just remember, the friendliness and the “flow” represented in your LAD Project website will also be evaluated. You don’t want your learners to get lost in your adventure.
PART I: GOOGLE SITE CONSTRUCTION
First of all, you need a Google account. Please register one if you don’t. Everyone in the team needs to have one, because ALL OF YOU need to have the access to edit the site. Otherwise, it will become one person’s responsibility.
After you create or log in with your Google account, please go to GOOGLE SITE. You will see an orange square on your left-hand side showing “CREATE”. Click that tab and it will lead you to the next page. On that page, you will see many different templates. PLEASE CHOOSE THE BLANK TEMPLATE. All the other templates will show in fixed frames and style that you need to know programming to change everything. That will be very time-consuming and troublesome.
Also, on that page, you need to give your website a name. When you type the name, you will see that Google is putting that name as the url below. In that case, make sure that you get the url first. Most of the time, people will have hard time to find a usable url. Once your url is decided, you can come back to give your website a proper name for this LAD project.
Below the url column, you will see the choice of “select a theme. Click that tab and you will see the choices of the themes. Find one that fits your topic and reader friendly. And then type the matching word at the bottom of the page. Once you are done with every choice on this page, go back to the top and click “CREATE SITE”. It will lead you to the website home page.
On the top right, you will see a tab with a pencil image, that means “edit”. You can edit the page by clicking that tab. After you click that tab, there will be a tool bar just like every word processing software. you can type the content, change the font, font size, color, insert link, insert image or video…etc. But remember that every time you change something, you need to click “SAVE”. That will lead you back to the page. If you need to edit, click the pencil image again.
The other image is a page image with a cross, that means “add new page”. When you need to create a new page for different components in the rubric, you need to click that tab.
After a new page pops up, you need to name the page. Stay with the choice of “WEBPAGE”. Also, stay with the choice of “Put Page at the Top Level”. In that case, all you pages will be of the equal level. You will need to change to put the new page under a certain page when you want to have a sub-page. DON”T WORRY ABOUT THE ORDER OF THE PAGE on your left-hand side. We will change the order of all the pages at the end of the design.
Name your pages CREATIVELY. It DOES NOT need to follow the word I use in the rubric. Make this LAD project interesting, creative, motivating to your target learners!
Another important thing is that the creator of the site needs to share the right to edit the site with your partners. EVERYONE IS THE AUTHOR OF THE SITE. When you are on any page, there is a BLUE TAB on your top right said “SHARE”. Click that, and you will get the link of the site, you can change the access to the site. At the bottom of this page, you will see “INVITE PEOPLE”. When you type their email address you can change their right from “can view” to “is owner”. Then he/ she will have the same right as you.
These are basic skills of making a Google site. Now feel free to use the time to work on your design of the LAD Project. Some people like to create pages on the site at the same time. Some people like to work in Word first and then paste everything later when they are ready. You have the right to choose how you do the work. But DO USE THE CLASS TIME TO WORK WITH YOUR PARTNERS. I don’t want you to waste the class time chatting…
FOR FRIDAY:
COULD
Be CREATIVE for your LAD Project!
SHOULD
Enjoy your week off for reflection and keep working on your LAD project!
So we are not going to talk about Google site construction today. We need to make sure that all of you have an essential question for your LAD Project before you leave class today.
Resources:
Tubric– If you want to use one of the Tubric to help you and your teammates to make your ideas into a good essential question, feel free to grab one. But please return it to me before you go!
Assessment Tool— This website is about assessment. How can you assess your students? If you do have trouble in thinking about something interesting to work on, start thinking about what kind of assessment you want to have for your learners. Then maybe that will help you think about some good essential questions.
Project-based Learning Database by BIE— You can search for projects. This website is completely about PBL. They have more hundreds of projects. If you can’t come up with a good essential question, maybe you will find one from these projects. Then you can design your own content.
There are two handouts at each table. These handouts are for you to check your project and essential questions. Are they well-developed? After examining your essential question according to these two handouts and you are satisfied with the question, please talk with me and let me know your ideas and essential question(s). Then you can keep working on other sections in the rubric.
FOR WEDNESDAY:
COULD
Be CREATIVE for your LAD Project!
SHOULD
schedule the timeline with your partners for LAD project.
Let’s take a look at the rubric again. Feel free to ask any question. This is the first time I try to do this project. There might be something that I couldn’t think about due to my own limitation. If you see something that you are not sure or have better suggestion, please talk about it! Thanks!
Now let’s take a look at the timeline.
Oct. 14– Google Site instruction (20-30 mins)
Oct. 28 and 30— I will be in CA for a conference. Don’t need to come to class. BUT MEET YOUR PARTNERS TO WORK ON THE PROJECT. Nov. 4 and 6— Short Presentation for your LAD project progress for peers to give you feedback. Nov. 18, 20, 22— Final Presentation for your LAD Project.
We will spend two more days (Oct. 18 and 23) to work on the peer comments on each other’s blogs.
If you don’t have any more questions about the rubric and the time line, let’s move on to grouping. I can take 4 people for this kind of big project. But remember, you are a team working together. At the end of this project, you will complete a peer evaluation sheet. Your project WILL NOT be evaluated until you complete the peer evaluation sheet.
We always say there is no dumb questions…we always encourage students to ask questions. However, I do need to remind you that some questions are not appropriate for this kind of design project. For example, if it doesn’t take student to explore, to analyze, to delve into some situations, then it won’t be a good question.
Grant Wiggins (2007) mentioned that an essential question should be questions that “any thoughtful and intellectually-alive person ponders and should keep pondering?” (quoted from http://www.authenticeducation.org/ae_bigideas/article.lasso?artid=53) He gave out several good point to think about essential questions. Let’s take a look at his ideas about essential questions.
So how are you and your partners develop an essential question?
Let’s see how a group of teacher and subject experts come up with their essential question for children?
Here is one way to help you develop your essential question:
On an index card, write a question related to a topic about which you enjoy learning. For example, “what happened to the dinosaur?” or “why did the Titanic sink?”
Work with your teammates and use a tubric to turn your question into an essential question.
How good is your question? Use the essential question development checklist on the last page of this handout to see how well you did.
Once you decide your essential question(s), please tell me what it is. Then you can keep working on that section. Think about what subjects will be covered in that essential question and the importance of doing a project to solve the problem.
One way I will suggest to all of you for this design is— Don’t follow the order of the rubric. Think about the idea of BACKWARD DESIGN.We do it all the time. Think about cooking. Do you go buy everything and start to think about what you want to cook? No! You have the recipe in mind first and then go buy what you need to cook. You have the products in your mind first. So try to think about what you want your students to learn first! And then think about how you are going to make learning happen!!
FOR MONDAY:
COULD
Cheer for Dawgs!
SHOULD
Work on reflection 8– Project-based learning and Design.
MUST
For those who were absent last Friday, finish giving comments to your partners. Others, read the comments you get and give appropriate feedback by Oct. 14.
Thank you for giving me very constructive opinions in the mid-semester evaluation. You are all very good at giving me suggestions to make this class a better one. We still have two months that we can make some changes. 🙂 To me, another interesting thing is to see how people have different opinions on the same thing. Here are some conclusion from all of you.
Love/ Hate:
Reflection (frequency/ load/ content/ due date/freedom)
Guest speakers (topics/ numbers)
Stop Animation (interesting idea/time/ familiarity with the software)
Love:
Course blog content
Could/Should/Must
FOOD!
PART II: PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING
I believe most of us won’t like to learn something that is not applicable in our daily life, right? I remember I always asked myself the same question when I was learning advanced mathematics in high school. For example, calculating the probability. Do I need to know what the probability of taking a green ball out of the bag while there are 2 green balls mixed with 3 red balls and 2 yellow balls? Therefore, we try to make everything more real and applicable. That is the problem-based learning. We try to solve the real-world/ authentic problems. You see a lot of problem-based learning in architecture education, business education and medical education.
We have watched a video about how a teacher use problem-based learning in her classroom. The main focus is that you need to have an authentic problem to work on, right? And we mentioned that problem-based learning is common in architecture education. So here is a problem related to architecture…
CHALLENGE:
Work with people at your table. The only rule is to use the 3 bamboo skewers and clay to create a structure that balances by only ONE point of ONE skewer on ONE of your fingertip for at least ONE minute.
PART III: PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
A lot of time, problem-based learning is strongly connected with project-based learning. Project-based learning does not need to tackle with a real-world problem. At the same time, students are usually more involved or have much more control in the project. But both of them provide a student-centered learning environment. Teachers play the role as a facilitator. Students need to do the research, work on solutions, and synthesize the resources in order to construct the knowledge.
Let’s watch this video about project-based learning.
Here is a very nice infographic about project-based learning. Hope this infographic and the video gives you some more ideas how to design your learning adventure and design project.
PART IV: LEARNING ADVENTURE AND DESIGN PROJECT (LADP)
So, what are we exactly going to do for our final projects? Here is the rubric for your reference. Let’s take a look together.
FOR FRIDAY:
COULD
Keep the dialogue you have with your peers in blogs. You got a lot of feedback now. Please check what your partners have told you and respond to them. Please finish commenting back to them by Oct. 14.
SHOULD
Work on reflection 8– Project-based learning and Design.
MUST
Think about an essential question– a question you are always wondering/ curious about/ interested in; a question that is important in K-12 education/ higher education.
Read the rubric for the final projects. Ask questions on Friday!
Mid-semester Evaluation Please do me a favor to complete this evaluation form. Please give me your sincere suggestions and critique. Thanks! You have 10 minutes to complete this form.
Just a few reminders.
The PBS video “Is School Enough?” is available online now. I haven’t finished watching it, but it is a great “documentary”. If you are in education-related programs, I highly recommend it!!
The documentary ” First Generation” will be presented at Cine (downtown) at 7 pm this Thursday. Again, it is free for UGA students. Please link to the website and register for this event.
PART II: CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
All roads lead to Rome. There are always several ways for us to solve a problem. It’s important to help your students develop the critical thinking and problem solving abilities. I read an article talking about the “Pampered Child Syndrome”. Any of you get the idea what that means?
Due to this syndrome, more and more children lose the abilities to solve the problems they encountered in their daily life. As educators, we do need to challenge ourselves first. You all did a good job in trying something new for the stop animation infomercial project. For the rest of this semester, I am going to push you all more to walk out of your comfort zone. I think that is a good way to learn, right? So let’s spend a few classes talk about several important topics in the 21st century learning– critical thinking and problem solving. These two will lead us to another two topics– problem-based learning and project-based learning. But first of all, let’s challenge ourselves a little bit.
CHALLENGE:
Work with people at your table. The only rule is to use the 3 bamboo skewers and clay to create a structure that balances by only ONE point of ONE skewer on ONE of your fingertip for at least ONE minute.
When you are done, think about the following questions:
How is the balance activity an inquiry activity?
Could the balance activity be considered problem-based learning?
When have you experienced the problem-based learning approach in your classes? (What is problem-based learning?)
How is this connected to critical thinking? For that matter, what IS CRITICAL THINKING?
WHAT IS CRITICAL THINKING ANYWAY?
Critical thinking is a hot topic in the 21st century learning, but it is not a new idea at all. Researchers have been working on this topic for more than 2500 years! Let’s see how it is defined according to the experts.
Here is an interesting video to tell you about critical thinking– Critical Thinking Explained. Have you thought about that? You are thinking critically and solving problems every day!
THE NETS STANDARD FOR PROBLEM SOLVING
Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. Students:
identify and defineauthentic problems and significant questions for investigation.
plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project.
collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions.
usemultiple processes and diverse perspectives to explorealternative solutions.
In the textbook we used before, they defined problem solving ability this way.
“Students applycritical and creative thinking skills to prior knowledge during the problem solving process. The end result of problem solving is typically some kind of a decision: choosing a solution and then evaluating it.” (p 155)
“Problem-based learning (PBL) is a teaching approach that combines critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and inquiry as students explorereal-world problems. It is based on unstructured, complex, and authentic problems that are often presented as part of a project.” (p 156)
If you type the words into the word cloud software, you will get a wordle like this.
PART II: PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING AND PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
I believe most of us won’t like to learn something that is not applicable in our daily life, right? I remember I always asked myself the same question when I was learning advanced mathematics in high school. For example, calculating the probability. Do I need to know what the probability of taking a green ball out of the bag while there are 2 green balls mixed with 3 red balls and 2 yellow balls? Therefore, we try to make everything more real and applicable. That is the problem-based learning. We try to solve the real-world/ authentic problems. You see a lot of problem-based learning in architecture education, business education and medical education.
In the following video, you will see how a teacher conduct problem-based learning in her classroom.
[
A lot of problem-based learning is strongly connected with project-based learning. Project-based learning does not need to tackle with a real-world problem. At the same time, students are usually more involved or have much more control in the project.
So, what are we going to do for the last two projects? Here is the rubric for your reference.
FOR WEDNESDAY:
COULD
Keep the dialogue you have with your peers in blogs. You got a lot of feedback now. Please check what your partners have told you and respond to them. Please finish commenting back to them by Oct. 14.
SHOULD
Work on reflection 8– Project-based learning and Design.
MUST
Think about an essential question– a question you are always wondering/ curious about/ interested in; a question that is important in K-12 education/ higher education.
Check the rubric for the last two projects. We will talk about more details on Wednesday.
Reflection 7 is due today. Again, you don’t need to give me a late pass if you can finish it by dinner time (no later than 7 pm).
We haven’t worked on each others’ blogs for a long time due to the stop animation project. And I didn’t see many activities/ conversations on your blogs. Therefore, we are going to spend the complete session to work on each other’s blogs.
You will be assigned to different groups to read and comment on your group members’ blog posts (reflection 3-6). Make MEANINGFUL COMMENTS as well, please. After that, you need to read the comments from others and respond to their comments.
What am I going to say to my peers?
Give comments on their ideas, thoughts, choices of images…etc.
Tell them whether you agree or disagree with them. Why?
Can you give them some new ideas or directions to think about the topic?
FOR MONDAY:
COULD
Keep the dialogue you have with your peers in blogs.
SHOULD
MUST
Think about an essential question– a question you are always wondering/ curious about/ interested in; a question that is important in K-12 education/ higher education.
Technology Integration in 21st Century Classrooms 