Steph Does Tech

Throughout this class, a few things have stuck with me. The first of these are the modules and resources related to project based learning. As indicated in my artifact reflections, I look away a lot from these assignments. They helped me to realize that implementing PBLs into the classroom, doesn’t seem so intangible now. After thinking about his type of learning through these assignments, I can see how using PBLs in my classroom could be feasible. Going back through the modules to prepare for this reflection, I was also reminded of the techtool hunt we completed on the Google Doc. I had forgotten how useful that document is. This chart gives us access to many, many tech resources, some of which I have never even heard of. I have made a copy of this chart to use in the future. I think this was a great way for people to share resources and it creates a database. One of the hardest parts about technology integration is hearing about great resources, but not having a place for them in y...

The second artifact that I chose to reflect one was the UBD assignment in which one of my PBL ideas was elaborated on and planned for. Similar to my first artifact, I chose this artifact because it challenged me in a new way. While I am familiar with the UBD construct and principle, I have never utilized that framework to plan for a unit of this nature. For this assignment, I utilized my PBL outlines to choose a project I felt could be realistically implemented in an environment where I had the ability to manipulate the curriculum purposefully. The project I chose to further develop was about school start times. I chose this because it has been a hot topic in our school over the last couple of years. This year, students have late arrival one day a week which provided a launching point to discuss the topic. When thinking about PBLs it is important for students to have an investment in what they are learning, and I felt like this topic would provide a high level of investment for my stu...

The first artifact that I chose to reflect on from this course was the PBL planning assignment. I chose to include this artifact in my reflection because I felt as though it really challenged me. While I had certainly heard of project based learning prior to this course, I had not actually spent anytime pursuing how I could implement project based learning (PBL) into my class. In the general overview I had of PBLs, I could not see how this model could be one I used given curriculum demands, time constraints, and IEP goals to be working on. The creation of this assignment forced me to reevaluate my previous notions of this type of learning. In preparation for this assignment, I utilized some resources that helped me to do this reevaluation. For instance, the Edutopia article “What the Heck is Project-Based Learning?”, written by Heather Wolpert-Gawron, clarified that while there are many elements that define PBL, not every project has to meet every element in order to be classified as...