I do not have any recent “projects” that I worked on
specifically, but would like to talk about projects that were being worked on
in my classroom toward the end of last school year. This wiki project I had students work on could be considered
a type of project, in which I attempted to manage within the classroom and
online.
There were several issues that caused the project to be somewhat of a failure. I did not have any idea what the finished product should
have been. I knew what kind of time
vrame we had to complete the project, but did not realize the needs of the
students in researching and writing in their own words. Too many of them did not write their
wiki page in their own words and basically copied information from other
websites onto their own. I also
did not realize how difficult it was going to be for students to have access to
computers during the last month of school.
The project may have been more successful had I created a
good description of what the finished product should look like. It also would have been good to break
down the tasks in to parts and describe each phase of the wiki design for the
students. I also should have
began planning and scheduling the project earlier in the year so that there
would be enough time to complete the project using the computers in the
classroom or media lab (Greer, 2010).
I probably should have done some more task analysis in the design phase
and that way there would have been more informaiton for defining the project
and establishing a plan (Portney, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, &
Kramer, 2008).
As I think through this project for class, I realized that
there are instances where teachers can be Project Managers in the classroom if
they are approaching a project like a yearbook, or in this case a wiki project.
References
Greer,
M. (2010). The project
management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate
custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
Portny,
S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., &
Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management:
Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned your project may have been more successful if you included a more descriptive explanation of what a wiki should look like. I know that when I work with students it is a thin line between giving good directions and giving too much information. You have to keep it open for the students' creativity while offering guidelines.
I didn't want to give too much to my students, but in analysis of the project it clearly shows the lack of understanding in my students in terms of web pages and writing outside of Language Arts Class.
DeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that you are able to verbalize where you "went wrong" with the project. I am a strong believer in a post-analysis of every project. It allows everyone involved to reflect on the good, the bad, and the horrible! Now that you have more experience with the process of developing wikis, will you be making that a part of your curriculum this year?
I am always critical of my lessons and teaching and when things do not go as planned, I look at what I have done and how it could improve. If the analysis of what I did shows that there was nothing more I could do, then I look at the student work and what they should have done differently. As the adult professional in the classroom, I really feel that it is ME who can make adjustments to affect change in my students. I can then encourage change in my students to go beyond and stretch their learning.
DeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteWhen designing a project for students to complete you mentioned that it "would have been good to break down the tasks in to parts and describe each phase". Especially for younger students, it can be beneficial to break projects down. If given a huge project students often shut down as they get so overwhelmed, especially if there are many decisions to make and no examples. Do you think you would do this project again, knowing what you learned from last school year?
Krystle,
DeleteYou are absolutely correct. It is a good idea to give students a break down of how exactly the work should be done or how the teacher would prefer them to get started. A rubric per say would be a good start for them to have in this case or a visual outline for them to see how you would develop your project. When working with students I have learned that it always helps to show them an example, then show them your creative way of doing it. This gives them a soul feeling to how they can create their own piece of work. But before this can be done directions of some type has to be given to lead them the right way, if not confusion and uncertainty of results will arise.
I do plan to use a similar project, but will give more details. I did provide students with the expectations for what they had to include. Instead of researching and writing in their own words, they copied directly from other websites and pasted in their wiki.
DeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteI have a couple questions for you on this classroom wiki project you had organized for your students to develop. What was this wiki assignment about...or what were they actually using it for or t do? Ex. blog, communicate, etc. You said, "I did not realize the needs of the students in researching and writing in their own words." A suggestion for this project or one in the future could be to have the students develop a wiki and see who can find errors within one another's writing and see what tense they would use to fix it.
The students had a choice of making a wiki page for a famous scientist (I have a big List), a science related career, or a page on the science learned this year. I did give guidelines of what information should be included, but instead of researching and writing like they were taught in Language Arts class, they copied information from other web pages and pasted it into their wiki. Others got a little carried away with fonts and colors on the wiki and made it really hard to read. I was hoping to publish the project for others to see, but there was so much plagiarism that I did not feel comfortable.
Delete