rubric...

In this rubric, I used 6 areas to assess the students. They are: planning (management skill), originality (thought), quality of source (data), group work (collaboration), IT use (Information Technology), presentation (presentation skill).

Hopefully through my PBL project, students can gain not only historical knowledge, but other inter-disciplinary knowledge

Reference:

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/

Timeline assistance...

David Moursund (2003) stated that “because time is usually a critical and limited resource, it is important to develop a timeline that shows how the time resource will be allocated” (p. 51).

I do agree with his idea about timeline; however, I would adjust the concept of timeline with my studying-style and characteristic before creating one.

Timeline is a tool. It has advantages and disadvantages. The most clear advantage, of course, to assist students allocating the time they have. If they didn’t use a timeline, maybe they would slip in their project. I kind of think a timeline as a progress board as well because every time students see their timeline, they will also notice how far the project has gone or which part hasn’t been done.

When I was talking about adjusting with studying-style and characteristic, I wanted to address the disadvantage of timeline which I think very related with those two things. I believe a timeline will become a pressure for students who don’t have a good time management, or those who have bad habit in organizing. If one couldn’t manage his/her time well, he/she would be frustrated each time he/she saw the timeline, and this might result in messy project outcome. Concerning the habit in organization, students who are bad in that would see timeline as a nightmare because before they can create a timeline, they should understand, plan, decide all the tasks they should do for the accomplishment of the project.

Open source tool: Blogr

It is interesting to see one good quote like this in a blog:

"learning with the read/write web"

I used to think that blogging is simply a fun site. People blog just for sharing personal activities or experiences --> just like a diary. However, it turns out that blogging is also a tool for learning. Will Richardson in his blog: http://weblogg-ed.com/ stated:

"Learning in the 21st Century is all about networks and the connections we can make to other learners and teachers both in our communities and around the globe. But being literate in this new learning environment requires more than knowing how to read and write. It requires us to edit, publish, collaborate, create and connect in the process of building our own personal learning spaces."

I do agree with him. I believe that students in this millenium generation need to know more than the previous ancestors. They cannot just sit in the classroom chair, listen to the teacher, do the homework, and complete the assignment. They should become better, and doing so doesn't mean that students need to learn harder. They just have to learn smarter.
Learning can happen anywhere, anytime and using any tools. With blogging, students not only get the reading and writing process, but also constructivism process. They will learn to think, analyze, create, design, and manage. Moreover, there are many free blog sites in the internet. One of the sites I found quite interesting is the Blogr.

Blogr provides a free spot for us to create our own blog site. It's free, and they will also help you to design, manage, and publish your blog


How to implement it in the classroom??
There are many ways doing it. Teachers can use it as a PBL lesson. Students can be assigned to create the blog, explore its features & use them, and collaborate with other web 2.0 tools.

As Mr. Richardson believed that "the almost limitless potential of Weblogs as a teaching tool is fostering an explosion of innovative projects, partnerships and techniques at every level of education from elementary school to graduate programs," blogging can become the powerful tool to create a meaningful learning.

Question 3 for activity

"Teachers often ask the question "How can I make more use of PBL at a time when my school administrators are demanding that I spend more time teaching to the tests that our students have to take?"

I would first say: "Yes, you can!"

Of course, this will bring challenge and time consuming for the teacher because he/she has to study, understand, analyze, adopt, craft, and design the PBL based on the subject matter will be tested. On details, the teacher has to study and understand the content subjects, then start analyzing it with question "what and how should I teach to the students in order to answer this test without focusing on memorization?" Once the teacher has figured out the material, he/she has to adopt the material into PBL concepts, then design it into the shape of PBL lesson.

This looks difficult; however, the main point is simple. It is basically: "how to change the teaching method to learner-centered." The curriculum would be the same, but the instruction and the delivery should be "authentic and challenging," and the focus should be "having students pose challenging problems and tasks, and then working to solve problems or accomplish tasks." In this way, students will understand the content more than traditional delivery method, and remember longer than memorization (Moursund, 2003, p. 21).

Inquiry: ask to know about how

What is Inquiry Based Learning (IBL)?
I've heard and read many thoughts about the definition of IBL, but when I analyzed more and simplified it, it came to the conclusion that IBL = ask to know about how.

I gained lots of information about IBL from videos about IBL and the seven inquiry-based questions in http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/index.html. Well, honestly, I didn't read all of it.. =) Mostly I just skimmed the readings, but...... wait the minute! I found one interesting question and the answer contains all principles of IBL. It's the 2nd question, and here is what I got from that page:


One more thing that I found interesting from my reading is the word "think." Somehow, I believe this word becomes the main goal, guidance, and process of IBL. Teachers will want their students to think than to memorize; they will focus on how to make students think when they create IBL; they will also expect the students to do the thinking during the lesson.

When I read Mr. Moursund (2003) book, he also mentioned about IBL has the same foundation as Project Based Learning (p. 37). And then I thought: "of course!" That's why IBL has almost the same principles as PBL. However, it is true that if we wanted to study more about IBL, we would find that IBL focuses on getting the students to get involved in, to have interest in the lesson more, to ask more questions in order to gain more information and knowledge. I think that is why many teachers uses IBL in their science and technology area.

Some PBL topic ideas...

--> What I got from the chapter
Look at http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddr83njm_116fd2sw9f4

--> Activities
I found 3 interesting projects in the www.gsn.org/pr/

1. Seasonal changes through our eyes and yours project
- http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSH/pr/GetDetail.cfm?StartRow=1&view=2&projtype=%272009%2F09%27&sortby=Start%20Date&fAge=5&tAge=19&pID=1855
- The brief: Students are asked to observe tree, temperature, clothing, and sunrise/sunset for one week during winter and spring season. Then, they have to make report and/or photos/charts, send it through email to other peers, and compare. Finally, they have to make also the comparison data.
- I like this project because students will be engaged a lot. First, they have to research data and do preparation. Second, they have to do observation. Third, make report. Fourth, send email. Fifth, read peers report and compare. Sixth, make comparison report. There are many things students will learn from this project. Not only they learn about
environment, temperature and seasonal clothes, but also do many interesting, motivating, and thought-provoking activities.

2. Global communication project
- http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSH/pr/GetDetail.cfm?StartRow=1&view=2&projtype=%272009%2F09%27&sortby=Start%20Date&fAge=5&tAge=19&pID=3608
- The brief: students are required to research data about life in other countries, from food, religion, government, etc. Then, students will have to create questions for the students from that 'other' countries so that they can collect data about the United States perception from the eyes of students outside the United States. At the end, students are expected to build a database based on the collected data.
- Actually, the idea is brilliant because students will have to do many research, including designing questionnaire and creating database. However, I think this project is complicated and have prerequisite information (in this case, students might not be able to start if the prerequisite is not available). The prerequisite is the student from the other countries. Based on the detail information about the project, the teacher will first provide each students/group with some names of students from outside the United States, then they can start doing the research and the questionnaire. The problem is: what if nobody outside the U.S responded this project? Then, the project might not be completed fully, or the teacher might give some dummy data, which I think is not good, because as Moursund stated that "One important role the teacher plays in a PBL lesson is in helping students see the parallels between the project and similar real-world projects" so that it is important to connect the students to the real sources or data (p.23).

3. The virtual museum of music inventions project
- http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSH/pr/GetDetail.cfm?StartRow=1&view=1&projtype=future%2Ccurrent%3Ball&sortby=Start%20Date&fAge=5&tAge=21&pID=141
- The brief: students are asked to make their own instrument and analyze the process of the sound making in the instrument. After that, they will take some pictures of the instrument and send to the pictures to the Virtual Museum of Music Inventions for display.
- This project is interesting because students are expected to create something real, through some research of sound and voices. However, if I were a teacher, I wouldn't choose this kind of project for my students because there are not many activities they can do, and from the overall assumption: this project is too difficult. Creating real instrument that really works will need lots of time, and in this case, there will be not many things they will learn from.

What is PBL then??

--> Personal reflection of the whole chapter
When I first read this chapter for my note taking, I didn't understand because it looked complicated. However, after I did the note taking and read one more time from my note taking, I could understand the flow of the content. It's simple. Mr. Moursund just reviews 4 things about PBL in this chapter: the definition, student's point of view, teacher's point of view, and the difference between didactic learning. That's it.. =) He not only tries to list, but also explains more details, that's why it seems complicated in the first place.

Honestly, I really like when the author explains the point of view from the side of the student and the teacher. I think.. it can become 2 important points in creating PBL: the goal of PBL so that the PBL could hit the target (creator understands to always design a PBL according to student's expectation) also as comparison so that PBL is NOT created ONLY for the sake of the student, but also for the teacher (creator understands to also design according to teacher's purpose and expectation).

--> What I got from the chapter
This part is linked to http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddr83njm_115gmmsq8c3

--> Activities
- I've answered the question no.1 (my PBL experience) in my ejournal for ch. 1, so I will answer question no. 2:
I can say that the teaching method I got since I was in the elementary until high school was didactic learning. I remember that my teacher asked me to remember the periodic table for chemical subject, memorized the history of my country, also the cities and their features for geographic subject. Well, in physic and mathematic I didn;t have to memorize anything except the formulas. And for the social studies, I just learned from textbook. Every single day my teachers will stand in the front of the classroom, taught us their skills, gave us homework, tested us several times in 1 semester, and graded our scores.
Well.. this kind of method does have strengths, and I think the best one is forcing my brain to memorize things (at least my brain worked and get exercised.. =D), though at the end, I forgot almost every knowledge I memorized. And perhaps, the other benefit of didactic learning is its easiness. I believe it won't be as hard as PBL, because students don't have to think more than memorizing. Of course, the PBL will be harder, but like I've mentioned aboive, it is worthed to do because students learn and think more, and the knowledge will retain longer in their brain.
If I ever get a chance to teach, I will do both approches, but I will try to do the PBL more than the traditional one. I will use the didactic for teaching formulas, but I will use PBL to teach other things. However, in teaching with didactic style, I will have to use mindtools so that students can understand all the relationships between components, also can remember them longer. I believe this is the way to avoid the weaknesses of didactic approach.