1. Discussion on what should be considered in finding the "big idea" for a project.

The "big idea" is what you want your students to get from the project or lesson your teaching. So you want to find the main point of what your teaching. so after you find your over arching concepts for your students you want to reflect on why these particular concepts are important. From this you start thinking about application and relevance to the real world. In this chapter they focus a lot on is the topic relevant to your students. I like one of the examples in the book, a teacher in a fishing communities has his students write a letter, which is an ordinary assignment, to the Minister of Fisheries because this topic is one they would commonly hear discussed at the dinner table (p.45).

2. Discussion on the 21st century skills.

I like that there is a focus on how the project will help the students develop 21st century skills. This portion talks about Blooms taxonomy and how your project can evolve using the higher order thinking skills in it. For example in the Analyze section, students will investigate, classify and prioritize, in the Evaluate section, students will judge, defend, recommend and assess. these skills are critical in any student succeeding in our time.

3. Discussion on the 21st century literacies.

The new NETS-S came out and specifically addressed creativity, innovation, communication, and collaboration among other things. There is so much to this category but i lied how the book put it, "literacy boils down to learning to be independent, aware and productive citizens"( p.49).  its all about how we facilitate our students learning about information, the tools they use, the outlines and rubrics, all of this is the basic literacy skills that are critical.

4. Discussion on each of the essential learning functions.

-Ubiquilty: learning inside and outside of the classroom, and all the time. -This gives the students the opportunity to learn any time, through handheld devices like mobile phones and even gps devices. Tools that help students be more mobile and learn wherever they want.

-Deep learning- Deeper thinking happens when students have to navigate, sort and analyze information. 

-Making things visible and discussable- I like the phrase showing rather than telling, and a picture is worth a thousand words. these describes this learning function. Examples of visual representation are Google Earth, and Flickr.

-Expressing ourselves, sharing ideas, building community- With all the social media there are so may ways students can express themselves.

-Collaboration-teaching and learning with others- projects in general invite collaboration, some tools are wikis, survey tools and learning exchanges.

-Research- For most research projects students turn to the Internet.

-project management:planning and organization- this helps students manage time, work, sources, feedback from others and drafts. different folders serve as good organizational techniques.

-Reflection and iteration- Reconsidering and reshaping help facilitate deeper learning.

5. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.

21st century skills are very important to our project, because we are using 21st century technology to do our projects. we are using different computer based software's to complete the different projects we have, like the concept map and the virtual pen pal, those are technologies i hadn't used before but now i know how to use them.