Reflective+Journal+for+Week+of+December+17

I am still feeling frustrated about the survey and the students response to it. Even though we read the questions and circlated in the computer lab while the kids were taking it, many of them still didn't really answer ti quite honestly. Although in their minds, maybe they did. The number of students who professed to be experts was quite suprising, especially when you talk to them about a program or skill on the computer many of them look at you with blank looks on thier faces.

In the Introduction to Project leanring, I agreed with many of the points made about the skills the students could acheive from doing these types of activities like, that it would incease academic acheivement, help them to apply and retain information(THIS IS THE BIGGIE), help with their critical thinking skills, communication skills and collaboration skills. While all of these are important and I agree project learning will help with these things, I have to wonder, when will we have time for that?

In Setting the Stage, the pieces about Inquiry Learning. I thought some good points were made. I liked how he explained the project, asnd suggest what the writing tasks to show amstery would be. I also liked how he circulated and encouraged students, how he offered support but did not tell them how to do the project. When he prompted them to explain their thinking and provide evidence, he defintely was helping them to apply and retain the information(an important aspect of other video). I think the thing about the vidfeo that impressed me the most was the girl who said she learned best that way, how when they first trying making the wings they kept failing and they finally figured how to do it, and she will always remember how to do it because of that.

In reading the articles about cooperative and collaborative learning. I was a bit over whelmed. It was almost too much inforamtion to take in at one. I think each seperate link could be a weekly study and discussion. I think cooperative learning is important, I think it teaches alot of social skills as well as the answers to the original problem, but I just don't know in our structured cirriculum how we can really fit in big projects like this. Sure we can do small things like a experiment or something that takes one or two days, but I think that itns't what they really meant. In an ideal world we could find the time and flexibility in the cirriculum to do these things.