4 take aways + 4 changes

4 key takeaways

                The first thing that I learned from this experience is that when doing such projects, it is important to have the support of the teacher. I learned that if I as a teacher decide to allow people to do projects such as this in my classroom I have to have clear guidelines set for them before they enter my classroom including what times will be best for them to come in, as well as what I expect of them if they are going to come into my classroom and try to do activities with my students. Being that we didn’t really have any of these things initially it was very difficult for us to pick a starting point as to what we wanted to get accomplished during our time in the classroom with the students.

                I learned that technological integration can be done either correctly or it can go very wrong, therefore not teaching anyone anything. At first we had one idea; then we did change it up after the teachers at PK met however it did end up working out. I realize that this project could have been much more meaningful to the students but at the same time I believe that we did allow them to learn something from what we did in our project. Once we get the wiki situation figured out they will be able to utilize the tool and it will be an even more meaningful tool for them. I have seen several times throughout this project that the integration of certain technologies even in our own project could have gone wrong. Without the proper usage of the videos which we created with the students it would have been pointless to do so.

                When working with kids especially on a project as we did in this particular class, it is important to be sure that the students understand exactly what is expected of them beforehand. We were able to compose a brief “presentation” for the students which explained what we would be doing in the classroom with them as well as what part they would play in our project as well. Without establishing these expectations and maintaining them throughout the time we were in the classroom I am sure that we wouldn’t have gotten as much done as we were able to within a week’s time. We initially asked the students the questions which we were going to have them answer in our video interviews, and we made sure that they all understood what was being asked of them. Each day that week before we interviewed the students on the video we also re-asked them the questions beforehand where as to make sure that they had an answer.

                The fourth thing that I learned from this particular project which won’t necessarily benefit me but other who might take this particular course in the future is that the teacher who is in charge makes a huge difference in how the projects turn out. We were able to have a great, supportive teacher to help us out with this particular project. At first we realize that we had a big job ahead of us; however halfway through it was looking as though that job was not going to happen. With the help of our professor our group was able to have the necessary meetings with the right people and we were able to make something happen. However it would not have been possible without our professor (Thanks J ) helping us out and getting us up and moving once again.

4 suggested improvements

                The first thing that needs to be established when (if) this project is done again by other students would be to make sure to have teacher involvement. In my group, we seemed to have that involvement at first, however it slowly slipped away as time progressed. We ended up working everything out, but it took a great deal of e-mailing back and forth amongst myself, my professor and our cooperating teacher. Teacher involvement is a must throughout the process.

                One other thing which I learned throughout this process was that a set plan (to an extent) needs to be established from day 1. We started our project with one idea of what we wanted to do and it sounded good at first to our group and our teacher that we were working with. However after we started working all of the fourth and fifth grade teachers at P.K. decided that they wanted to change everything which was a great downfall. From there we had to change everything which was a bit disheartening at first but we ended up being successful regardless of the downfalls we faced.

                The third thing that I learned throughout this project was that when working with technology especially in the schools it is important that all participants make sure that the tools they want to utilize are viewable in the schools. For one thing, when we went to show the students our idea for the wiki, we planned to show them videos of students working within their communities as examples of what we hoped to see them do before the end of the assignment. The computer speakers were the only source of sound for quite some time, until we found an additional set of speakers to hook up which were still not very loud. This was problematic not in that the websites didn’t work but in that the students had a very hard time hearing the videos. Secondly, our group created a wiki to house the student’s videos and comments and such which we had planned on them adding to later in the year once they finish the unit they are currently working on. Now we are currently in the middle of figuring out another wiki where all the students have their own log in names rather than having one simple log in that all the students can use.

                It is important that within the groups that jobs are set; however it is also very important that if those original jobs or roles do not work out that they are reevaluated at various points throughout the class. My group members and I each set out with a role which we would take on while working on this project. But unfortunately the project did not develop as much as we would have hoped, and myself and one other individual ended up doing a large majority of the work. Now I must say that it was not because the other two group members were slacking necessarily it was just because their roles were not really as integral at the parts of the project which were able to complete. Where our group “failed” was that we did not necessarily reevaluate the roles of each of the members to be sure that we were all doing an equal amount of work. 

Situation Report

As far as progress which has been made this week, I did not go to the classroom so I have not had any further contact with Mr. Steffens face to face however I have e-mailed him and have not gotten a response. The contents of the e-mail can be found here, and once I hear from him I will update my post to include the new information which we recieved.
I am going to set up a time to meet with my group members next week (if possible) in which we can meet to discuss our plans as a group including timelines, responsibilities of each person (I feel they might need to be tweaked as we get into the project) and the responsibilities or roles that we plan for the kids to have in the project. We have as mentioned discussed splitting them up into four teams, each team having a different role and I would like for us as a group to further discuss the responsibilities that each of those teams will have to look after in order to make our project as much of a success as possible.
Today the 4th and 5th grade teachers had a planning day of the next unit; which will start March 7th and end after we graduate. Therefore if we can get into the classroom and effectively implement our idea the students will of course be in charge of the upkeep of it once we leave. I am hoping that we will find success in our goal of having them make a webpage but we shall see once we are able to get into the classroom and really work with them as opposed to simply observing which is pretty much all we have been able to do up until this point.
As far as updates from this week, Danielle went to Mr. Steffens class with Brittny yesterday and these are the notes which she provided us all with as an update afterwards.
Brittny went to the planning that the teachers did today and say should would update us on the way that went very soon but I am still waiting to hear from her so for now this is all the new information that I have!

Situation Report Feb. 10th

I did not post this until today, the 10th due to the fact that I met with our teacher again today. This Monday I was finally able to meet with our teacher, Mr. Steffens, and have a brief discussion with him regarding our groups work in his class. This is an "exerpt" from the update which I posted on a google doc to update my group members of the progress which was made at Monday's meeting. 

. . . . . Brittny sent out in the email from him last week, he wants us to do a sort of collaboration within the unit that the 4th and 5th graders are studying right now.
This is the information from the e-mail he sent us; he mentioned something about a narrative journal writing project based on some aspect of Westward Expansion. However with our late starting and such we decided it would best for us to try and integrate our project into the time they will spend learning about the Constitution. He said that Ms. Geiger already talked with the other 4th grade team and they are going to work on making it “less dry.” So once I started talking with him I expressed my main concern being that we had to relate this project in some way to social media and social change, and he said that we could most likely come up with something to do locally. I expressed to him the importance we expressed in terms of really having the students come up with the idea rather than us handing one to them and he came up with a good idea of within the next few weeks us creating a survey online or a blog of some sort for the students to take allowing us to know their interests and such so if we could start doing that (Katie :) ) that would be a good starting point for sure. He did say that they would not be done learning the content until February 22nd which we can work with as long as we try to get lots done during this somewhat down time we have so that once we get in the classroom we are ready for “anything.”
He expressed the importance of communication via e-mail as often as possible rather than face to face meetings as we had a brief one of today, which makes me feel better but he did stress the fact that we need to keep in contact with him almost on a daily basis as well so that we are all on the same page. So I guess that we need to decide if Brittny wants to remain the student contact as we had originally proposed or if you would like to be the teacher contact. It is up to you we just need to decide.

Brittny and I met with him this morning, February 10th; during the students reading block from 1145 to 115 and it was quite different than I have ever experienced in a classroom. First of all I'm not used to working with older students, so it was unique to be in this fourth grade classroom where students were all working so independently. We were able to observe the class working on their journals regarding either a journey on the Oregon trail or the Trail of Tears. All of the students were working but they were all doing different things simultaneously which was really neat to me how the students knew what they were supposed to be doing and got right to work (with the exception of a few stragglers). After talking with Mr. Steffens we learned that each class both fourth and fifth had a different subject which they were working on. His class is working on the idea of Westward Expansion, while the other fourth grade class is working on the Gold Rush. All the fourth and fifth grade students were given the choice of what topic they studied and then they go to the corresponding teacher for 6-8 weeks, depending on how long it takes for them to learn that particular content and complete the assigned tasks. We learned that Mr. Steffens has about 9 5th graders in his class, out of the 16 or so total students. After observing the students working I realized that even though there is a mixture of 4th and 5th graders, regardless of that fact the varying levels of writing ability within that group is so diverse. One student was completely done with her assignment, one student was putting finishing touches on his final draft, one student was completing his rough draft and some students were only halfway through the preliminary drafts of their paper. I learned that differentiation will be key in keeping the attention of all the students and making sure that there are varying levels of activities which are applicable to all the students.

We discussed the future, specifically next week and decided that at least two of our group members will be going back to observe the students again, I'm hoping that it will be either myself and Brittny and the other member of our group who hasn't been to the classroom to see the kids yet. It will be our job to come up with a more refined idea of what we want the kids to do (as best as we can) this week so that we can talk to him about it next week. Next Friday the fourth and fifth grade teachers will be meeting to plan for the next chapters which is where we will come into play. The fourth grade teams will be working on the Constitution; after talking to Mr. Steffens we want to try and do a website or blog of some sort in which the students work to try and find a way to make the content relevant so that the Consitution takes importance in their lives. Most people seem to just "brush it off" as though it doesn't see applicable to them however we are going to work on changing that.

For now this is all that we have but we will keep in close contact with our teacher via e-mail so hopefully we will have lots of updates for next weeks situation reports. It will be our job of working on a survey this week to provide the students with so that we can find out their interests and what level they are at technologically so that we know where a good starting place will be after they learn the content.

Synthesis Paper

            According to Jenkins et.al, the computer has a potential to create a learning revolution. The computer is only one form of technology which can impact the learning environment of a 21st century learning environment but it opens up the doors to so many other tools which can be used by both students and teachers (2006). The effectiveness of teaching and learning is highly dependent upon how relevant the content is to the students it is intended for. The integration of social media into a curriculum has the capability of making content very relevant to students not only the content aspect but the tools used as well; students today are ingrained with a connection to technology. Technology has the power to “extend education to more people, making it more relevant, immersive and open (New Media Consortium, 2010). The integration of technology and social media into the classroom would be a great way to reach students, especially if popular modes such as Facebook, Skype, cellular phones, Ipods and other popular tools such as those could be used appropriately in education. The students would see that the teacher can “speak their language,” which in today’s youth is what they are longing for.The students today are known as “digital natives” meaning their generation is “native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” (Prensky, 2). Teacher might demonstrate some difficulty at first with the job of technological integration because they are not digital natives but it will be very beneficial in the end once the teacher proceeds through that struggle. After looking over a few articles found on Edutopia.org, “society is moving towards a model of shared knowledge building, where people from all over the world can interact, question, reflect, and reshape thinking in meaningful way.” If social media has the capability of bringing all of these aspects into classroom why wouldn’t we want to integrate such an aspect into our classroom?

Our group has decided to split the responsibilities up so that each person has an equal amount of responsibility. One group member is going to maintain the contact with the teacher , one with the community resources we might utilize, one will be responsible for the “paperwork” involved with the EME course such as the Thursday roundup and and reports. We will be able to get a better idea of who will be doing what once we determine the social media project we will be doing with our students. We have not yet been able to meet with our teacher at PK because of miscommunication as to who would be making the contact. Once we meet with our teacher at PK and are able to talk to the students we will be working with my group members and I will be able to narrow down and establish each persons responsibilities throughout the semester and we will refine our ideas that we want to see play out during our work on the project with the students.  

Edutopia. http://www.edutopia.org/social-media-case-education-edchat-steve-johnson

Prensky, Marc (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon. 9.3. 1-6.

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20

mmigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf