Reading Reflection 3

Chapter 3 focused on establishing the conceptual framework of a project. When finding the "Big Idea" of a project, you must identify the overarching concepts and processes you want your students to understand, and then reflect on why the concepts are important. You want to make sure the big ideas are authentic, relevant, and engaging. A big idea won't make an impact in a students life, and allow them to learn what they need to know, unless they are invested. A good example of a teacher that uses a"big idea" effectively is Robert Griffin, who teaches in a fishing community. He uses authentic projects to reveal the "interdisciplinary nature of a project". It motivates children to do their best, because they know they will have to use it outside of school as well.
A 21st century skill is skills, attitudes, and habitats needed for higher order thinking and actions. It incorporates Digital-Age Literacy, Inventive Thinking, Effective Communication, and High Productivity, while engaging objectives such as analyzing, evaluating, creating, synthesizing, and evaluating. By using digital resources in authentic projects, students become motivated and thoroughly engaged.
21st century literacies are interlinked with 21st century skills. Students will become fluent in learning to be independent, aware, and productive citizens. By using 21st century skills, students discover digital literacies through authentic learning. Because students grow up "cutting their teeth" on technology, using technology in the classroom is just logical. Digital literacy includes creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, digital citizenship, and technology operations and concepts.
There are eight different essential learning functions. The first is deep learning. We must teach our students to make sense of "raw" information on the Web, such as primary sources and rich databases. The second is making things visible and discussable. We need to make things visible with digital tools by showing rather than telling, conceptualizing with "mind" maps, seeing things too big or too small or too fast or too slow for the naked eye, examining history through digital artifacts, expressing ideas through multimedia, graphical representations and modeling, animation, and digital art. The fourth is expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, and building community. We must teach our students positive and upbuilding ways of expressing themselves. The fifth is collaboration- teaching and learning with others. Projects are a natural segway for collaboration- whether it is in person or through the internet. The sixth is research- teaching students to do correct, organized, and quality research through the web. The seventh is project management: planning and organization. We want to help students manage time, work, sources, feedback from others, drafts and products during projects. The eighth and final essential learning function is reflection and iteration. The student must examine their work from all sides and other points of view to truly grasp it.
This concept relates to our project about food preservation because it helps us to form our lesson plan around our students. By understanding what they need in terms of essential learning functions, how we can help them to use 21st century skills and literacies, and how to develop the big ideas, we can formulate our projects to help our students get the most out of it.