Process and Technology
Not only was this website a culminating project for me this semester, but the unit that I have designed and included in the site will be a culminating project for my students in their second semester this school year. I have adapted a unit from the Virginia Standards of Learning and the Fairfax County Schools Program of Studies and enhanced it with the use of hypertext, hyperlinks and hypermedia. I feel that this is an effective unit, for I have incorporated key ideas that students have learned in the second quarter and combined these ideas and concepts with research skills that they have been learning in Language Arts class and in Library. I have included some scaffolds such as links I have found pertaining to their topics, but have also asked groups to utilize our Fairfax County databases to find good sources of their own. I have also included meaningful images and video tutorials to help get my intended message across to the students. What will make this unit effective is how students have enough choice for them to increase their motivation in the project, but not too much choice in the process so that they will not lose track of the intended outcomes desired in completion of the venture. Students have the ability to choose from three different topics while creating their projects. They also have choice as to how to present their project. In doing this my unit aligns with my constructivist beliefs that learning stems from, “ill designed assignments and projects” (Shepard, 2010). These kinds of activities positively affect my classroom by creating experiences that students will remember, and surely demonstrate that I care about their education to them much more than having them copy down the definitions and study them.
I have also utilized technology in the process such as Snagit to record videos to demonstrate how I would like my students to complete some of the more complicated tasks such as signing their online student contracts through GoogleDocs. The contract that I have provided them with holds a dual role of providing students with choice while simultaneously holding them accountable for their assigned work inside of their group. This should hopefully help the group to distribute the work evenly among its members and serve as a reminder as to which student is expected to do what task. This is a potential solution to my major concern with the group work. Certain groups tend to let most of the work fall to one or two of its members. Through utilizing this student contract, this potential issue may be remedied. In adding and editing many of my images I was sure to coincide with Tufte’s principles. For example, on my science page on overpopulation, I clearly labeled that the two images were supposed to represent what the pond looked like over time as more and more man made features were introduced into the environment (Tufte, 1983).
I have also utilized technology in the process such as Snagit to record videos to demonstrate how I would like my students to complete some of the more complicated tasks such as signing their online student contracts through GoogleDocs. The contract that I have provided them with holds a dual role of providing students with choice while simultaneously holding them accountable for their assigned work inside of their group. This should hopefully help the group to distribute the work evenly among its members and serve as a reminder as to which student is expected to do what task. This is a potential solution to my major concern with the group work. Certain groups tend to let most of the work fall to one or two of its members. Through utilizing this student contract, this potential issue may be remedied. In adding and editing many of my images I was sure to coincide with Tufte’s principles. For example, on my science page on overpopulation, I clearly labeled that the two images were supposed to represent what the pond looked like over time as more and more man made features were introduced into the environment (Tufte, 1983).