Friday, June 29, 2012

Project Proposal

Project Proposal
Grade Level
Sixth Grade

Subject Area(s)
Language Arts and Social Studies

Technology Overview
One of the concepts of this class that has really struck me is the idea that the use of technology must be taught as a skill, not merely being used specifically for one program/project/type. In line with this thinking most of my project proposal will be ways that I will integrate technology use in the classroom in broad terms. I will be utilizing many of the resources that I was introduced to at the technology institute in my classroom at the beginning of the school year.

Transparent Teaching

Teacher
I want to begin the year by creating a class blog to demonstrate the transparent teaching aspect I’ve learned during this class. By maintaining a blog with videos and photos I hope to keep the parents informed by showing them what is happening in the classroom on a daily basis. I would like to experiment with creating tutorials and posting some of my lessons online to demonstrate both the transparent and reverse teaching aspects of the class.

Students
I’d like to have the students contribute to the blog as well, discussing what is going on in their classes and responding to assignments. I think it would be valuable to have the students reflect on their lessons on a regular basis. What’s working? What’s not working? The instant feedback would be extremely helpful for me since I’m teaching in a new school this year.

Parents
I’ve really liked some of the ideas we talked about in class about having parents commenting on the blog as part of progress reports and project reflections. Ultimately, I’d like to the parents and students constantly interacting about what is going on in their classes.

Administration
I hope to utilize my class blog as another tool to show the administration what I’m doing in my classroom. It is another way to show how I’m assessing students and communicating with my parents.

Community
I think that I will be opening my blog up to the school community after I have the blog established after a month or two. I think I will keep it limited to my school community.

World
I don’t think that I will be opening my blog up to this venue.

Reverse Teaching
I would like to assign the students watching lessons on the blog as homework. I’m curious to see how students and parents will respond to this flipped classroom. I’m also interested in how students might respond to tutorials/lesson explanations posted by other students. I don’t expect students to do this at the very beginning of the school year, but I think it would be another way to approach reverse teaching. I was also thinking about students having a place where they could just post questions and answers to each other. I would moderate, but I wouldn’t be involved in this piece. If the questions weren’t addressed on the blog, I would have the students discuss the answers or find the answers during the next class period. After having attended the workshop on OpenCourseWare, I was really intrigued by the online study groups that developed by themselves in places like Open Study. I’m curious about how sixth grade students would tackle similar problems if given the tools.

1 comment:

  1. Awesome ideas.... I like your statement "One of the concepts of this class that has really struck me is the idea that the use of technology must be taught as a skill, not merely being used specifically for one program/project/type."

    Again don't forget to figure out the logistics... that will be the area that will create the most barriers

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