Blog Post #7

After watching PBL Part 1and PBL Part 2Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps talking about project based learning has given me an even better understanding of what project based learning is. Project based learning isn’t just giving a student a project after learning a lesson in the book to make sure they grasped the information. There have been many teachers in my past who have given out a project after learning about something, and expect us to take what we learned and use it in our project. When doing the project it is hard to remember what we covered and everything about the information because all we were taught was reading out of the book. This is an example of burp back education. There are a few ideas that make up a good project in project based learning. The first one is audience. If the student is given an audience to present their work, for example blogs, then that makes the student more determined to give it their best. Another one is student interest. You have to make the students interested in what they are learning and make them excited about wanting to learn about that subject. Project based learning would make the student excited about wanting to learn more and dig deeper to get more information on that subject. Another idea is community involvement. This is similar to audience because they are wanting to impress the person who is reading their information. Getting the community involved in their work can be so simple. One example Anthony Capps gave is writing a letter to congressmen Jo Bonner. This gave the student the excitement to make their writing better and make sure they used correct grammar and spelling of the word. When they received a letter back, he said his students were so excited to see that someone really did read their work and they will most likely remember that experience forever. The last one to remember about a good project is that it has to be driven by content. When giving a student the assignment, you can also make sure to incorporate the standards so the students are also meeting the expectation they are expected to exceed.

Icurio

n this video Anthony Capps does an excellent job describing iCurio. The purpose of iCurio is for students to search websites, images, videos, and media that have been filtered for educational use. . Mr. Capps discusses how the information pulled using this tool will accurate and appropriate. Not like Wikipedia where any and everybody can change the text of an article. Mr. Capps also discusses storage on iCurio, students are able to store different types of information they find. This is helpful, because I have been in that position where I have had to write down a website I wanted to use for an assignment, only to not be able to find that exact article I needed. This also helps with student virtual organization skills. Mr. Capps also discusses the historical figures feature. This feature allows students to search by criteria, for example, Indian women 1920. Overall, iCurio is a great tool that should be used in all classrooms.

Discovery Education

Also Discovery Education is an excellent tool that can be used in the classroom by teachers and students. This could be the connecting puzzle piece that your students have been waiting for. With Discovery Ed, there are narrow searches so that it can help you find exactly what you are looking for. When providing a visual to students to in the classroom, they retain more about it because they can think back when they saw that video that day. For an example of Discovery Ed, if you are teaching about rocks in the classroom, the teacher or the student can get on and look up the different rocks they talked about that day, so it gives them a better example and they can see a real life visual of the rocks.

The Anthony - Strange List of Tips for Teachers Part 1

By: Autumn Sprouse

In this video, I learned 5 important things all teachers should think about. The first thing is you have to be interested in learning yourself if you want to succeed in education. The second thing I learned was that it is hard work, but you can make it be fun. Like they say, you never work a day of your life if you love what you do, and you truly have to love what you do to make anything fun. The third thing I learned was to be flexible and unexpected things will happen. The fourth things is to get kids motivated and engaged. If they are not engaged in wanting to learn, they are not going to be motivated. They must be motivated to be fully engaged. The final thing is to reflect, revise, and share work with your audience. At the end of an assignment, revision can be done. The project might of not turned out how you planned, but you learn everyday in the classroom and you can make the changes in what needs to be done to make it more effective. Everyone can also use revision, you can only make it better! With the audience, why not share your students work with an audience? Showing your hard work with others is always important!

Don't Teach It - Use it!

By: Jessica Mose

In this video Mr. Capps discusses how to introduce technology to students. He basically says to start off small, as you would when introducing anything new to students. Gradually adding steps on how to better use the technology. He also says that teachers should allow the student to be excited about the technology and for them to talk about what they learned and share ideas. Mr. Capps makes the statement, "Don't TEACH technology INTRODUCE technology!" This saying makes perfect sense and self explanatory. I honestly never thought about how a teacher could make the mistake of teaching kids technology instead of introducing technology. But I feel a teacher could easily fall into the trap of teaching technology. For example, telling/showing kids how to exactly find the answer or complete a task. Doing this does not give that student a chance to explore the technology, and really learn from experience. So as a future educator I will not teach technology, but instead introduce technology.

Additional Thought About Lesson

By: Chelsea Powers

In this last video I watched, Anthony Capps said that each lesson should be 4 layers deep. The first layer is everything being tied together. The second layer is dividing the unit into 2 different sections. This will take 6-8 weeks so that everything works up to that final step. The third layer is the week. The fourth layer is the lesson. All of these are important and vital to the learning process. The fourth layer should contain something that will keep the students attention through this weeks process and to ensure the engagement of the students attention. During the course of the school year all the standards should be met.