Week+6+Journal

Monday December 7 - Sunday December 13

[|Project, Problem, & Inquiry Based Learning]
 * Monday - I really liked the idea of Project Based Learning being the topic this week. I like to do these types of activities in my classroom and think this is really beneficial. I enjoyed all of the readings. I don't know that I necessarly learned much from them, but they were interesting. (I guess to see how it all plays together was what I learned.) I also liked the idea of inserting links covering the topic. This will cause me to do further research, but also beneficial. These were the two I chose. [|What is Project Based Learning?]
 * The link on What is Project Based Learning was loaded with sample activities, so I'm definately planning on checking these out further.
 * Wednesday - Today I took all of my history classes to the lab to complete the student needs assessment survey. During my first class, I had 3 kids that didn't even know how to get on the internet, about 5 that didn't know their login information to even start the computer running, and another 5 that didn't know thier progress book login information. So a lot of time was lost looking up their information. As they read through the survey they had many questions as to what the survey questions meant (they weren't familiar with the different tools listed on the survey). So if they don't know what the stuff is, they are not using it. I don't think our kids have as much experience with technology as we previously thought. I would assume that all of my studnets have been on the internet many times, but the ones who didn't even know how to get there completely blew me away. I'm very curious as to what the results will be.
 * Friday - I had some time today, so I decided to check out the link that I included in my reponse for this week. (It was the link above "What is Project Based Learning"). Many of the links on the site didn't work. I was kind of excited thinking I was going to have a good site to go and see many examples (because there were so many links on the page). It ended up wasting much of my afternoon. What a bummer.
 * I have decided that after Christmas I will do the [|"The Outsiders" webquest] that I found. I have split my two reading classes into groups. I am going to have each group create a google site to display their information & findings. I'm going to do it like I described in my response. The main page of the google site will have an overview of the project & conclusion to the findings. Each student will act as a juror, and place their findings on a new page. I'm pretty excited about this and hope that they will be too.