2.3 Authentic Learning
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to engage students in authentic learning experiences. (PSC 2.3/ISTE 2c)
Artifact: Engaged Learning Project
Candidates model and facilitate the use of digital tools and resources to engage students in authentic learning experiences. (PSC 2.3/ISTE 2c)
Artifact: Engaged Learning Project
Reflection:
I used my Engaged Learning Project to represent mastery of Standard 2. I created this activity in my 21st Century Learning, ITEC 7400 class. I took this class during my first semester of this program. At that time, I was just getting familiar with NETS-S and the Georgia PSC Instructional Technology Standards.
This Engaged Learning Project demonstrates mastery of Authentic Learning Standard 2.3. This project showed a real life problem that the students were going to have to take an adult approach to solving. Digital tools would have to be utilized to complete many of necessary steps in solving this real life problem. The digital tools that were to be used in this Engaged Learner Project are: Kidspiration, Excel, polldaddy.com, and Microsoft Word. The teacher would be allowed to only act as a facilitator in this project leaving the majority of the work up to the students. This project was going to take many hours of collaboration in the classroom to complete the survey, the graph, and writing the persuasive letters, all part of the necessary steps to complete this project.
This project becomes an authentic learning experience when the problem has the students assuming the roles of the adults, in order to solve this real life problem. In this problem, the students had to collaborate and come up with the questions for the survey. They used the survey to obtain the opinions of the people in the community. Once they had that information, they had to graph it using Excel or Graph Club. These students took on the same role that any adult would have if he/she was fighting for this cause.
Since this was one of my first technology driven projects, I was just beginning my adventure into project-based learning. It was fascinating learning about the benefits of being a technology facilitator in a classroom compared to being a teacher in front of the class and teaching. I loved the idea of allowing the students to collaborate and take risks while trying to solve problems together. The teacher is present but allowing the students to brainstorm their own methods of solving a problem. I do not believe I would change anything except possibly take out the graphic organizer on Kidspiration.
This project was a huge impact on the 2nd grade staff and students as they had never done a project like this before. The teachers had a hard time stepping back and allowing the students to complete the steps on their own, especially the surveys. The teachers wanted to guide them as they created their surveys but they could not. As the students wrote their persuasive essays, the teachers wanted to assist them with vocabulary but they were only to facilitate when needed. The 2nd grade students had a great time being in charge of making decisions. Their writing even improved since they were pretending to be adults they wrote their persuasive letters with above level vocabulary and double-checked for grammar mistakes more thoroughly than normal. The teachers were very pleased with the outcome of their writing and their efforts in all. The second grade teachers said that this was a big project and took a little longer than planned but it proved to be beneficial to the students and the teachers as well.