PETE-C08_Notes

Use this as a place to share your notes from PETE & C

=**Donors Choose**=

//Get your pet educational project funded through [|donors choose] - Jean//
=KEYNOTE SPEAKER MONDAY= media type="custom" key="494252" Project based Learning (PBL) is a "real world" teaching style that aligns with and is supported by the idea of authentic assessment, and assessment style.

The process can be summarized in 3 steps:

STEP ONE: Define your outcomes which should be based on a) your Standards and b) your particular goals. It is also important as you begin to design your project to decide on given parameters for the project. This is the information given to students to ensure they say focused and don't stray too far. A rubric is essential to help guide your students to success. Do not give in to the temptation to develop this after the students have started and are nearing completion. The rubric should guide the students the whole way. It is also essential to establish deadlines. You can adjust these as you monitor progress, but working toward small goals will encourage success.

STEP TWO: Implement the project. Teach the tech skills as they come up. The internet will be your best tool for finding answers. Do not give students the answers, they need to learn to find relevant information. You need to help them learn to evaluate the information they are finding on the web.

STEP THREE: Usually, PBLs conclude with the students presenting their final products. Final products may be presentations (PowerPoints) which link to Budgets (spreadsheets), Letters and Mail Merges (Word), Invitations and signs (Publisher), etc. The final products should demontrate that students used the software in an appropriate way and used the correct software for each project (excel spreadsheets not word for budget for example)

Visit ISTE's NETS and see the profiles for ideas...use software in meaningful way. http://cnets.iste.org/students/s_book.html

From Tuesday Morning's concurrent sessions -"The real work of 21st century skills" by Ed Coughlin

Dave and I attended a keynote-worthy presentation this morning filled with valuable research about successful educational practices. While he had a lot to say, three bits are worth sharing here.

A. The number one correlate for success after college is an individual's ability to engage in self-directed learning behavior.

B. Five things that inhibit self-directed learning 1- Linking failure to lack of intelligence. 2- Low quality work - students asked to complete worksheets, etc. 3- Implying that a student is smart because they can do easy tasks. 4- Rewarding status (i.e. the honor roll) harms students at each end of the academic spectrum. 5- Praising Intelligence - instead of progress and effort.

Five things that promote self-directed learning 1- Grades based on progress and effort - ideally reported separately. 2- Scaffolding assignments 3- Positive attributes - when students experience a failure, they attribute the failure to factors they have control over (that way avoiding learned helplessness). 4- Authentic Learning 5- Opportunities to rework assignments

C. In terms of professional development - 25 is the minimum number of professional development "episodes" necessary to master a complex teaching practice. Based on this, I guess I'll be seeing you all at PETE&C 2032 :)

-Pete

PS - Here is a link to the presentation materials I used for my "the Next Best Thing - Teaching using simulations" presentation. thesciencefactory

Focus on web 2.0 for story telling - check out tags at http://del.icio.us/jeanthorpe dragon software - speak to text - great for our writers whose manual dexterity holds them back from writing http://www.digitalriver.com/v2.0-img/operations/scansoft/site/367062/367062_dns-talk.html

[|Google docs] - great for sharing/collaborating for teachers and students - Jean