Reflection #6

Reflection 6
Technology tools can encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths. Blogs, ProfilerPro, and things like SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang can help with these aspects. Blogs offer a great space for students to get down all their thoughts in one space and then be able to go back and review their thinking. This will allow the students the opportunity to evaluate and potentially change any thoughts that they had. ProfilerPro is an online survey tool that allows students to self evaluate themselves. It will give them a chance to evaluate their weaknesses and strengths and then re-assess themselves and compare their results at a later date. SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang are online survey tools that students or teachers can create on their own. They will allow students to be creative and make up their own surveys as well as track different trends as they allow other students to take the survey.
There are many ways to engage your students to prepare their minds. A good way to before starting a unit or topic is by tapping into students prior knowledge or schema. KWL charts are a great way to start getting the students thinking in the direction the lesson is going. A KWL chart taps into what the child knows, wants to learn, and then finally learn. Another great aspect to add to the KWL chart is making a KWHL chart. The students can write down what they know, what they want to know, how they are going to find that out, and then finally what they learned. The How is a great way to get the students involved and explore ideas within the subject they will be learning.
There are positive outcomes when you teach the fundamentals first to the students. Students will gain more out of the bigger chunk of a project if they spend the small amount of time building their skills. Teachers should set the stage for independent inquiry. Before a project or lesson students should assess on what they know and don't know. KWL charts are a great way to let the students process this information before diving into the project with no understanding why. Another element that teachers should do is share the assessment rubric with the students. This way the students know the ultimate goal that they should reach at the end of the project. This will set the students up for success since they know the scale and values they should be shooting for.
There are important steps in preparing students for using technology in project. The important steps are set up a technology playground, tap the student expertise, introduce project-management tools, demonstrate, rely on your technology specialist, and analyze if the technology is a one size fits all or not. I really like the aspect of having students explore among themselves by setting up technology based assignments. This will increase students problem solving skills, which is a 21st century skill. I also like that after the students explore they can share with their classmates and collaborate with each other.
Teacher should also promote inquiry and deep learning. Guiding students to choose questions, plan investigations, and begin to put their plan into action. This produces many great ideas that the students will want to explore and be engaged in. Teachers should also guide students toward skilled questioning. This will lead to deeper thinking because they are tapping into their prior knowledge and applying what they know to what they want to know.
I think the whole aspect of promoting inquiry and deep learning applies in our project. By making the student develop their own meal plans or workout plans allows them to question what goes into a meal, or how a meal is served or prepared. This could be used doing a blog in which the students can collect their initial ideas and build on what they have written. This can help with the strengths and weaknesses while at the same time heightening their 21st century skills.