Reading reflection 2

Chapter 2 was all about creating a professional learning community. Teamwork is definitely the theme of the chapter. The focus of learning communities are a collaborative, professional community.  A learning organization is any business work team, big or small that engages in ongoing, collaborative problem solving focused on making businesses (or schools) better. A learning community is the same as a learning organization. Anyone within a learning community is continually learning how to learn together.
There are many benefits to learning organization, or a learning community. First, it can add support to your work and ideas. It also allows the teachers and students to collaborate, and work together to problem solve, and learn how to learn together- both of which are applicable in the "real world". Through the learning community, you are able to watch and reflect on each other's work, and give each other critical feedback.
As a teacher, you ensure that students learn, create a culture of collaboration for school improvements, and focus on results.
For teachers, specific benefits can include decreased teacher isolation, increased commitment to the mission, shared responsibility, more powerful learning, and a higher likelihood of fundamental, systematic changes.
The components for shared vision in learning communities include having a clear sense of mission, sharing a vision of the conditions you must create to achieve the mission, working together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice to achieve the missions, becoming organized into groups headed by teacher-leaders, focusing on student learning, being goal and results oriented, collaborating with each other, holding shared values and beliefs, committing themselves to continuous improvement, and seeing themselves as life-long learners.
The concepts in this chapter are extremely relevant to our project. Before we even begin to delve into the material, we must collaborate as a group in order to be on the same page, in order to all create the same final product. We need to have a shared vision of how to approach the topic, and then how to distribute the work and problem solve as a team how to accomplish it.

Concept map

Concept Map

Reading Reflection Chapter 2

           It is important for teachers to work together as a team and share ideas with each other. There are some grants available that create opportunities for professional development. The HP Technology for Teaching Grant is awarded to teams of five teachers who design and implement a project together. The grant provides technology to the team for assist in their professional development.

            I found it interesting that there have been international educators who collaborate with other teachers who are half way across the world. An example given in the book is one teacher who was in Bangladesh and the other was in Georgia. After many hours of collaboration they launched their project. Their students read The World is Flat and then their students discussed and developed connections with other students who were “from the other side of the flat world.” The two teachers supported and encouraged each other and their project was very successful.

            It is important to develop professional learning communities in schools, which allow colleagues to work together in a different way. It makes time for teachers to talk about what they are teaching and how they are teaching it. As a teacher you are a part of many communities of practice including the faculty as a whole and with teachers of the same grade level. I feel that it is important for teachers of the same grade to get together and learn from each other as well as give critical feedback.

            Professional learning communities could be a formal school reform effort or an informal meeting of teachers. Support can also be found in online communities. This is a good option for teachers who are not in a school with project based learning but would like to create their own shared learning. When creating a “dream team” you need to find colleagues with similar goals and values, someone who is passionate about learning and their students and who is committed to the project. When the "dream team" is created a project can be developed with new opportunities for teachers and students.

Reading Reflection #2

Chapter two taught me how to create a professional learning community. There are several ways to create this community. Some teachers choose to meet with a group of colleagues to help them collaborate ideas for a project to use within their classroom. Other teachers go online and find blogs that pertain to the topic they are looking into and eventually find another teacher, sometimes across the world, that they can collaborate with to work on a new classroom project idea. Other teachers meet just one on one with each other either at school or over coffee once a week to bounce ideas off of each other. I think that all of these are great ways to start creating a professional learning community. The teachers who decide to work closely with someone else will become a better teacher because they run ideas by their co-teacher or partner prior to presenting a topic to their class. This allows teachers to see where they may need to change part of their lesson and learn more about a portion of a topic before explaining and assignment to a class and then having it not work as well as the teacher thought it would.
There was a good example of how teachers worked together in a group to help themselves learn about a piece of technology that they had never used before. The teachers were given tablets to use in their classrooms and they were supposed to integrate technology into their science lessons. The teachers were not certain how to go about this so they decided to team up and work through their ideas. There was a lot of time and research involved but their lessons ended up being extremely stronger and more meaningful in the end because they worked together! I thought this was great and it shows that no matter what new technology is introduced to teachers, they will always be able to figure out a way to incorporate it into their lessons. Teachers will always be able to stay up-to-date with technology and learn how to use it if they can work as a team to help each other get through tough times and frustration.
Working as a member of a team is way better than working on your own as a teacher. Every teacher should be willing to put forth the extra effort to be a part of a team because if they don't then they will end up with the most work in the end. Working alone is much harder than working with another person or a few people. Teachers need to make sure they don't forget this and consider their colleagues a part of their family that they can go to at any time to help them work through any issue that may arise. Teachers should always remember that they can collaborate ideas with teachers across the world thanks to the wonderful technology that has been given to us and take advantage of that!

Assignment II Part A

Chapter One Project Based Learning

Chapter one is all about project based learning and how it originated. It was started by teachers who could look back at what they learned in school and realized they didn't remember ever doing one project in their school career. They remembered tests but nothing that they could recall in their brains that they remembered specifically learning in school. They decided that they needed to teach students the subjects necessary but without being dependent on text books. They came up with learning through experience and doing projects that helped the students learn by solving their own problems and overcoming obstacles. This took all of the focus off the teachers and the children ended up with more responsibility in the classroom.
I think this extra responsibility is important for students to experience. This is preparing them for life after school. There won't always be someone to guide everyone through life. Project based learning is helping those students become prepared to problem solve through situations when they don't have someone there to help them every step of the way. I wish that my teachers would have used this type of teaching. PBL would have been more interesting than sitting through my boring classes struggling to stay awake and having to read from 4 inch thick Biology books in high school full of words I didn't understand. I am a hands on learner and PBL would have been perfect for me in order to understand a lot of things I had to memorize in school. I don't remember a lot of things I memorized because once the test was over, I didn't have to know the material anymore. I would say a lot of students do this with information that they learn in school, but if there was something unique that they could remember doing in school then they would be able to keep that information in their brains the rest of their lives.
I agree that PBL would be difficult to use in a classroom if the rest of the school was not on board as well. I feel that the students may get irritated at the teacher using PBL because it is so much work and not a lot of people like to work in groups. This would be a big obstacle to overcome and have the students cooperate with the teachers requests. I like the fact that there are schools that are completely run using PBL and all of the teachers are cooperating with one another. The fact that all the teachers share their ideas with each other is nice and they are all on a database that can be accessed at any time in order to use, reuse or change to their individual liking.
Overall I think PBL is something that is important for teachers to start using across the board in order to help students learn more meaningful information and continue to retain the information well after test day!

Chapter 1 reading reflection

I think project based learning is a great thing to incorporate in the classroom. It gives students a hands- on experience that goes outside of the limitations of the classroom. Instead of a teacher standing in front of their classroom leading the lesson, the students ask their own questions and discover answers with guidance from the teacher.  

           Project based learning also prepares students for the real world. Students develop their problem solving skills as they discover their own answers to their questions. They learn how to manage deadlines and how to work as a team.
            Students also get the opportunity to work with new technology. Technology is a huge part of our society and students should be introduced to different technology at an early age. As long as the technology doesn’t turn into a distraction, then it can give students a huge advantage. It should act as a tool, instead of the main focus of the project.  
           Since this is a fairly new concept teachers should be ready to step out of the “traditional” classroom lesson and into a lesson that fully engages students and motivates them to learn. There is a lot of work that is required to initially set up a project. It is an investment that gets better as the teacher and students get familiar with it. Teachers need to rethink how they will manage their classroom, how they will assess progress and what the goals and expectations are for the students. This is a new concept for students as well. They will need to learn how to work and communicate with a team and how to manage their time

Reading Reflection 1

Reading Reflection 1

                Throughout the PBL journey, every student/pre-intern/teacher needs to keep in mind that this is not what is considered “normal”, teacher-centered teaching. Instead, “learners pursue their own questions to create their own meaning”. By using technology, students are able to become immersed in what they find interesting while learning useful skills along the way. Teachers must also realize that this may mean additional work for them- even if it is student-centered- because the teachers will need to make sure they plan meaningful, and innovate projects based on the classroom. Because this is a relatively new approach, teachers will need to adjust their thinking, and realize that they have a learning curve to achieve truly productive PBL. They can do this by conducting research or seeking expert advice before diving in. However, doing so will teach the children true life skills, and help them to find the answer to any question they may ever have.

                Teachers have found that PBL is not only efficient, but also effective. By having teachers invest in students, students develop good communication skills, good inquiry skills, flexibility, a further understanding of how the world works, and a sense of justice and social activism. PBL opens the student up to seeing what else is out there, and different ways to go about either understanding it, or solving it.

                PBL has many useful benefits to students. First, PBL allows students to be creative, and create their own knowledge. Not only are they learning valuable life skills that they can apply their whole life, but they are also learning more ‘educational subjects’ like science, social studies, math, and language arts, because they are interested and invested.

                When it comes to the PBL approach, we must consider the amount of planning we need to do, as well as being flexible and ready to adapt to any situation. Teachers must also talk and engage with students the entire time to ensure full participation. Teachers must be mindful about their own personal classroom management style, the arrangement of the classroom, the assessments, and collecting assignments. Finally, teachers must consider that communication with the parents and colleagues is vital if PBL has any chance of being effective with support from home and other classes.

                New Technology High School is a perfect example of PBL. New Technology incorporates 21^st century technology every step of the way to keep up with the needs of the students. They also designed it to be small, so teachers can work more closely with students, and so that full-fledged projects in the real world are easier to coordinate and instruct. Teachers are encouraged to work together to maintain a “project based learning” environment, sometimes continuing a lesson plan to be more focused or more in depth. New Technology also provides online assessment tools to help with feedback instantaneously, and much more accurately than an end of the unit test might. 

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