Morse Chapter 4 RR

CHAPTER 4: Project Management Strategies for Teachers and Learners, of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, p. 75 to 91.

1.Discussion on the potential pitfalls in project design. The quality of the the students' experience is critical when designing the project design. Some things to keep in mind while designing the project are as follows:
A. Make sure that the outcome of the activty cannot be produced by just lecturing or a "normal" teaching setting.
B. Allow for technology to be used and incorporated but that it does not take over the quality of the project and become over used.
C. Keep in mind that these project designs need to colalborate with several different topics while still promoting higher level order thinking.
D. The learning path needs to not be scripted out so in depth that the students are not guiding the learning by making critical deicisions about their learning as well.

2.Discussion on the features of a good project. The features that are includced with a good project include different possibilities and outcomes of which are directed by the student's guiding and critical thinking when constructing meaning from these different concepts. The project needs to be centered around an ultimate question or engaging topic that the students are interested and can be/or is directly related to real-life situations. The topic needs to be able to cross all different subjects and even the community. Students need to be able to conduct research with primary sources as well as research amongst one another and their previous background and growing knowledge. Students should also able to become experts on the topic and therefore driving learning to a higher order critical thinking level by engaging in communication, management skills, and technological useage. Ultimately, students need to be the driving force of learning.

3.Discussion on where project ideas come from. There are several resources that teachers can use to find project ideas such as news/media, student's questions or interests in a particular topics, contempoary issues which include both social and political issues, and/or classroom or school issues that the students feel as if they can fix or try to solve.

4.Discussion on the steps to design a project. When designing a project, first learning objects for core subjects must be made and set before anything else must happen. It is critical that these learnign objects are met throughout the year in order for this project to even stand a chance in working within schools today. Once learning objects are set, 21st-century skills are needed to be chosen such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Next, identify what the students background/previous knowledge is. It is important that we set a foundation for what they already have ideas and knowledge about so that we can build from there and restructuree if need be due to misconcpetions. After these are set, the structure for the background needs to be built. Plan an ideas as to how the students will go about learning, do to conduct research, and what they will create. These tasks should promote critical thinking amongst the students. Next, plan an anticipatory set - an activity to grab the students attention as well as management procedures that will be in place throughout the project.

5.Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project. While developing our project we need to be considerate of the potential pitfalls and make sure that we are not incorporating outcomes that cannot just be produced with a normal lecture or project within a normal class setting. We also have to be considerate of the topic going across all off the diciplines and can work under the objectives that need to be mastered in a particular time frame. As we are developing ideas for student research, we need to provide a variety of different strategies as well as effective and efficient strategies that are compatible with both the students and the research topic.