Reflection on Process of Creating Final Project

I like to think I am a very practical person and would rather not spend hours designing a project that will never be used. Since I am merely a substitute teacher and do not have a class of my own yet, I decided to plan my project for implementation next year when I will have a class of students - perhaps in the 4th grade at ISB.

One of my professional goals is to incorporate the use of new media in my classroom. As a parent I have enjoyed looking at photos and videos on my own childrens' class blogs, and this seems to be a good way to communicate the goings-on in the class to parents and other interested individuals.

Expecting 4th grade students to COLLABORATIVELY DESIGN AND MAINTAIN A CLASS BLOG seems a natural way to communicate with parents and to keep the learning of technology, writing, and reflection skills authentic and relevant to the students. This is what I decided to do for MY FINAL PROJECT, and I hope my future students will find the task challenging, enjoyable and engaging as they work together and take ownership of their learning, and also the sharing of their learning with others.

With my idea drafted and approved by the teacher, I began to look through curriculum documents which would guide my project. I explored ISB's TAIL Standards, ISB's Integrated Language Arts Outcomes, and the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-S) and was pleased to find that my project met such a range of standards.

Using the template on the class wiki was quite easy. I found the program itself straightforward and easy to use.

I wasn't quite sure what content was expected under the Six Facets of Understanding, so I had a look at my classmates' projects and at the exemplar, and was able to figure it out. The same was true for the GRASPS Task section.

I must admit that I basically just made up the Enduring Understandings. I wasn't sure if these needed to come from a curriculum document.

I noticed a lot of different responses in the section of "Lesson Notes". Some projects did not have any notes listed, others had detailed lesson plans. Since I will not begin to implement my project until next school year, I decided to simply record some ideas and resources in this section. I am very thankful to Chrissy Hellyer who led a session on Classroom Blogs during the Professional Development day, April 6. I looked at most of the resources she posted on her PD Day google doc and added the links to my project.

One site in particular seemed helpful - Sylvia Tolisano's Blogging Unit for Download. I know that sometimes when you go back to find a helpful article, it has vanished, so I printed out the lessons in order to have them on hand when I start to teach in August. However, there was one drawback, there are multiple links in the documents and these were simply printed as links without the actual URLs on the document. If I want to follow the links, I will either have to copy them all now, or pray that the site is still available next year. For this reason, I included both a link and copied the URL in my project document. It doesn't look pretty, but if someone (not sure who) finds my project interesting and wishes to print it out, they will have all the URLs for the links.

One point of frustration for me was trying to find ISB's curriculum documents on the school website. I was assured that they were there, but finally had to ask the curriculum coordinator to send them my way. They were on the "Curriculum Office Blog" which doesn't seem to have a link from the school's homepage. (I have had other problems finding links on the school's website. For example, I would think that the High School's publication, The International, would have a link on the school website, but I was unable to find it. Not even the search feature on the site was helpful. Perhaps I need a course in basic web browsing.)

With my project and this blog completed, I can take a deep breath and celebrate completing the work for this course - I think - I still haven't been able to find that nifty document that shows what work of mine is recorded as having been completed and what assignments are still outstanding. I do have another blog post in draft form, just in case I need it.

With that said, I am very glad I had the time to take this course and I hope I don't forget everything over the summer break. I've become rather attached to my RSS Reader, and I am looking at each blog with a critical eye as I plan to implement my project, but the jury is still out regarding Facebook, Delicious and Twitter.