Reading Reflection #4

               The potential pitfalls in project design are long on activity, short on learning outcomes, technology layered over traditional practice, trivial thematic units, and overly scripted with many, many steps. If the projects is busy and long but reaches small or lower-order learning aims, it’s not worth investing your time or your students’ time. If learning aims are lofty and technology helps your students reach them, then the integration of technology is essential to the project. Thematic teaching is not necessarily project-based learning, but when examining thematic projects or creating your own, look for ways a theme elevates and connects the learning. As teachers, we need to be wary of over-prescriptive project plans that have many discrete steps.

                The best projects share important features. These features are loosely designed with the possibility of different learning paths, generative, causing students to construct meaning, center on a driving question or are otherwise structured for inquiry, and capture student interest through complex and compelling real-life or simulated experiences. Good projects also are realistic, and therefor cross multiple disciplines, reach beyond school to involve others, tap rich data or primary sources, are structured so students learn with and from each other, and have students working as inquiring experts might. They also get at 21^st-century skills and literacy, including communication, project management, and technology use, get at important learning dispositions, including persistence, risk-taking, confidence, resilience, self-reflection, and cooperation, and have students learn by doing.

                Project ideas come from everywhere. Some examples are a tried-and-true project with potential for more meaningful, expressive learning, project plans developed by and for other teachers, news stories, contemporary issues, student questions or interests, a classroom irritant put to educational use, or even a “mashup” of a great idea and a new tool. There are other ways where teachers can find project ideas.

                As teachers we must remember that our project exists within a context. We need to keep in mind as we plan the school calendar, curriculum sequence, student readiness, and student interest. To design a project we need to revisit the framework. We need to make a final list of learning objectives for core subjects and allied disciplines. We also need to decide on the specific 21^st-century skills we want to address. Then we identify learning dispositions we want to foster. Next we establish evidence of understanding. We need to imagine what students would know or be able to do once they have learned as well as how they would be different as learners and as people. After this we plan the project theme or challenge. We should strive for enough structure and enough flexibility to serve the needs of the project, and true-to-life connections. Lastly we plan entrée into the project experience. What are the first things you might say to get students’ attention and build excitement for the learning ahead?

                Concepts in this chapter relate to our project because as teachers creating a project, we need to be wary of the downsides in project designs so we don’t make the projects a waste of the students’ time as well as our own. This chapter helps me as a teacher know some of the qualities that the best projects share so as a teacher I can find or create projects that help the students’ knowledge grow.