Reflection #7

1. Description of the levels of classroom discussions.

There are three main levels of classroom discussion, they are teacher to teacher, student to student, and teacher to student. In teacher to teacher, these conversations will likely touch on everything from the procedures to the assessments. If teachers don't have time for face-to-face collaboration, or if their colleges are far away, they can use a blog or a wiki to keep in touch and share ideas. In student to student discussions, its best for them to be talking about what their learning as they learn it, to their group members as well as across the different teams. Its important to remind them that good communication skills are part of an effective and successful team, and will help keep them organized and on track. Model how to give effective feedback as you listen to your students. In teacher to student discussions the lecture format is probably not going to be effective, especially in PBL classrooms. A whole class discussion is a great way to to check in on student understanding or wrap up a certain phase of the project.

2. Discussion on the questions for "checking in" on students during a project.

When your class is in the middle of a project, it is most likely that the different groups are in different directions and are going at different speeds. So here are some questions that might help in finding out where they are or if they need any assistance.
Procedural: Are we staying on schedule? Do we have the right materials available? Be sure to remind students of the project calendar if they need help keeping on track.
Teamwork: How are the team members getting along? Is one student carrying too much of the load for the whole team? Its good to ask questions about how they are solving their problems and this helps you asses their team dynamic. Its important to give them a safe place to raise concerns or ask for help if they are experiencing team trouble.
Understanding: You want to spend time observing teams as they work, listen to student conversations, and ask probing questions. Like Have you though about...? or Have you considered this research? If you see opportunities for students to go beyond expectations, make sure to encourage them.
Self-assessment: When you want to find out what the students are thinking about the project, give self assessment questions for them to reflect on. Project journals or blogs can be great facilitators of this to let students get out frustrations and share their excitement about the project.

3. Discussion on the benefits to students when optimizing the use of technology.

With the technology now a days you want to make sure that the certain tools you have chosen for the project are a distraction to your students, rather than a helpful tool. you need to ask yourself, is the technology helping students stay organized? Do the students have acceptable access to the technology? When technology is used to its fullest potential, you may find students gaining benefits you did not envision at the beginning of the project.

4. Discussion on the 21st century skills that can make or break a project.

Troubleshooting is a major 21st century skill that makes a student an effective project manager. this can help them earn from setbacks and fine-tune their strategies for getting a project back on track. I like what one of the teachers said in this chapter that "PBL is more like real life. you can mess up, but then you have the opportunity to learn from that and make adjustments" I couldn't agree more with this statement. There is so much value and learning in this experience.  Teamwork is another 21st century skill that is make or break for a project. Its really important to helps students learn to manage their own team conflicts. Its a real-life skill that will serve them well for years to come.

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

This chapter is very helpful to our project, especially in the category of 21st century skills. My group has had to deal with troubleshooting when we weren't sure how to do some things. We worked well together and ask the appropriate questions to help our team along.