Archive for the 'Project' Category

Replace Glogster Posters with Free QR code Poster

Published December 5, 2011 Glogster , Learn , MLD , Mobile learning , Poster , Project , QR , smart phone , Web 2.0 Leave a Comment
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Many educators like Glogster since students can put in links to videos, music, and pictures instead of just text.  As a  free alternative, students can create a QR poster as their learning  poster.  Their poster can be a regular one page word processing document.

The students type in their project title and their name.  They can use their favorite font, font size and color.  They can even change the background color (Format ->page -> background in Open Office).

They decide on the content for their poster.  If they are doing a country report, they may have links showing a map of where the country is, its geography, and its  major cities. The students can shorten the links using bit.ly and then use a QR generator such as Create QR code  to put all of these links in the same QR code. They can select a small 100 x 100 or 150 x 150 so they can put numerous QR codes on the same page. They can label this QR as country info and list under it  location, geography, and cities.  The student can include a picture in under the  Creative Commons license.   They can find three news articles talking about some of the current issues in the country, shorten these links and put them in one QR code. They may label this QR  as current events.  They may  want to list the actual  events under that QR code.  They can find some songs and art of the country, shorten these links and put in another QR code which they label as Arts and again indicate the exact topics in that QR code. They repeat this process for any other topics such as economy, neighbors, tourist sites both for people within the country and  for visitors, or literacy

They can word process their evaluation of  how the country has changed (for the better or for the worse)  in the last fifty years and  what they think will happen to this country in the next fifty  years.

They can email it to you, post it on a class wiki, physically post it in a country gallery in the room, and email it to parents and relatives.  If you have a country gallery in your room, students groups can compare and contrast the countries within a continent and then compare and contrast countries among the continents.

Which type posters will your students use to show their learning?

Tuttle’s formative assessment books:   http://is.gd/tbook

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21st Century Skills: Making a Difference

Published September 30, 2010 21st Century , 21st Century Skills , Curriculum , Difference , Education , Educational technology , Empowerment , Project , Project-based , Purpose Leave a Comment
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We can have our students develop many 21st century skills but they may not use any of these skills for anything other than their own academic improvement.  We can help them to use their skills to make a difference in our community, state, nation, or world.

For example, students examine a traffic problem at their local school,  come up with a viable solution, and present  that solution to the Board of Education.

Students create a video documentary  that shows a  historical perspective on a current problem.  They explore similar problems. They analyze what past solutions seemed to work and why  and which ones did not work and why.   They send their short documentary to their state legislators as these officials consider new legislation.

Students select a national problem such as literacy.  They then figure out how they can begin to work on the problem locally. For example, they may write and illustrate their own books,  digitally record the reading of the books, and create CDs to be passed out at the local food banks.

Students, collectively, select an area of the world and then read the various profiles of people requesting microloans on Kiva. The students decide which person/group they will fund after they decide on a criteria for selection.  Each student contributes one dollar so the class can loan a $25.  They looked at the map of where the other funders come from to see the international dimension of this project.  They monitor the repayment and then reloan the money.

To what local, state, national or world problem do your students apply their 21st century skills to make a difference?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

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Also, my  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

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Technology Supporting Or Hindering Learning In Your School?

Published April 18, 2007 Accountability , Project , technology , technology integration , Test 2 Comments

Technology Supporting or Hindering Learning?

A large district is implementing Acuity testing. Elementary/middle students have to be tested using this online program. Therefore, at this critical time of the year, all computers in a school are being confiscated in order to create labs of computers so the students can be tested. The labs will stay up until all students have been tested on both Math and English Language Arts. Will the testing disrupt the technology-based learning projects that teachers had planned for this year before they knew that Acuity would be implemented? Definitely! Will the Acuity testing help students this late in the school year? No! Will the students be re-tested the start of the next school year? Yes!

How does technology support learning in your school/district? When does it hinder or block learning in your school/district? How can you modify how technology is used so that it better supports student learning?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Bombed Technology Integration Due to No Standards-based goals nor Assessments

Published March 20, 2007 Assessment , Learn , Project , Standard , Student , Teacher , technology , technology integration Leave a Comment

Bombed due to lack of goal, not technology

I find that sometimes technology-infused projects “bomb.” They almost always are poor learning experiences not because of the technology but because of the lack of specific standards-based goals or standards-based assessment.

When I talk to a teacher and she says she wants her students to produce a newspaper, she is stating the task, not the learning standard goal. What academic skills does she want her students to learn? When I ask her what assessment she will use, she responds that she will use a rubric based on their writing effort. That rubric does not measure student progress toward a standard.

With neither a specific standard nor a specific standards-based assessment, no technology-infused learning can be successful. The more unclear the learning purpose is, the more the students are in a fog about what is important to learn and how they are to demonstrate their learning. Students can never master “Westward Expansion” but they can master the concept of the impact of the changes in the economic and social aspect of people’s lives due to a nation’s growth. Teachers scaffold the experience for successful learning through technology only when they are sure of the specific learning outcomes.

So how precise are your standards-based goal and standards-based assessment to make a great technology infused learning experience?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Don’t can student learning: Start with the Standard

Published February 10, 2007 Assessment , learning , Project , Standard , Student , technology Leave a Comment

Two bad models and one good one

I went to visit a teacher recently and she already had a project which was very defined. She wanted me to help her “add technology” to it. I certainly could suggest several technologies. However, none of the technologies were not going to benefit the project because the project was defined so narrowly. None of the wonderful advantages of technology such as collaboration, global dimension, archiving over time, etc. would be used in this project. At best, it would help students make their work be neater in this “canned” project.

I visited another teacher who said that he knew how to do PowerPoint so he wanted to created a project using it. He had learned how to create bullets and build in transitions. He wanted his students’ PowerPoint to follow his format. This time I was asked to fit the learning into a specific “canned” technology format without thinking of the purpose of student learning.

A much better approach is to examine the standard for which component a teacher wants to use, decide on an assessment, and then select an appropriate technology resource to help students demonstrate that standard to the high level expressed in the assessment. A standards-based lesson pre-determines the end purpose while opening up many possible ways of helping the students to get there.

Which approach do you use to incorporating technology into students’ learning?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Assessing 21st Century Skills in Classroom Technology Integration Projects

Published December 16, 2006 21st Century Skills , Assessment , Classroom , Project , School , Student , technology integration Leave a Comment

Time (Dec. 18, 2006) just did a major piece on Schooling “How to Build a Student for the 21st Century by Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, pgs 50-56. It basically reports that schools are not preparing students for the 21st Century skills. It argues that schools spend their time on minimal tests (NCLB) that do not measure needed skills needed for the 21st Century.

NCREL 21st century skills from Tuttle’s Learning and Technology Assessments

(From Harry Tuttle’s Learning and Technology Assessments for Administrations: Ithaca, NY: Epilog Visions, 1994)

Use the above chart to pre-analyze any project you are thinking of doing in your classroom. How high is the technology-infused learning activity score out of 48? That’s your 21st Century Skill score for the selected activity.

How can you modify the activity so that the students do more 21st Century skills in the project? Then you will be preparing the students for the 21st Century, for their future.

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Planning for Technology-Infused Learning Projects: Understanding by Design Model

Published November 25, 2006 Assessment , learning , Project , technology integration , Understanding by Design , Wiggins Leave a Comment

A very useful form for helping to plan any learning activity in schools is Grant and Wiggins Understanding by Design. Here is a slight modification of it for use in planning technology-infused or technology integration projects.

Teacher:

Subject:

Grade Level:

Number of Students:

Length of Lesson/Unit/Project (in days):

Stage 1: Identify desired results

– What enduring understandings are desired?
– What essential questions will guide this project and focus teaching/learning?
– What key knowledge and skills will students acquire as a result of this unit?
– What prior learning, interests, misconceptions, and conceptual difficulties might students bring to this lesson?

II. Determine acceptable evidence
– What evidence will show that students understand the expected learning?
– What will be the performance task?
– Will a state rubric be used to assessed the evidence?
– And what other a teacher made standards-based assessment will be used?
– How often will students be assessed during the project?

 

III. Plan learning experiences and instruction
– What sequence of teaching and learning experiences will enable the students to develop and demonstrate the desired understandings?
– What technology and other resources will be used?

 

One resource that includes good description about each stage is

http://www.lttechno.com/nlu/handouts/tie536/unitrubric.doc

If you have a UBD format lesson plan that you use for planning technology-infused learning, please share it. As we help teachers to plan using this model, we help them to plan for worthwhile instruction achieved through technology.

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