October 14, 2013

A decision has been made!

Ahhh….the final major digital project for EC&i 831.  I have tossed around multiple ideas as to what I should do for my final major digital project.  With the parameters being “wide-open”, something I am not accustomed to, I have found making a decision quite stressful.  

Is what I choose going to be appropriate?  Will it be applicable to what I do in my day to day assignments at work?  Will I end up choosing something that is way out of my league?

I emailed Alec Couros my initial ideas.  Unfortunately, what I kept circling back to was would I be able to complete such projects by the course’s end date?  So back to the drawing board I went.  Finally after attending the class with Sue Waters and after a conversation with a co-worker looking to inspire her students to write more, I decided that teaching grade 8 students how to blog would be my final major digital project.

Nailing out the details for this project is like planning a trip…

 

1. Where is it that we are heading?  Students will be able to:  view, listen to, read, comprehend, and respond to a variety of texts that address identity, social responsibility, and efficacy (CR8.1); create various visual, oral, written, and multimedia texts that explore identity, social responsibility and efficacy (CC8.1); create and present a variety of visual and multimedia presentations with adequate detail, clarity, and organization to explain, to persuade, and to entertain (CC8.5).
2. How will we know that we have arrived?  Students will have created a blog with posts that journal the learning they have been doing, the connections they have made, the questions they have and how they have synthesized the information to make it their own.  Students will also comment respectfully on the blogs of others by connecting their learning and experiences to the post they have read.
3. How are we going to get there?  Students will examine the blogs of others, they will set up their blog platform in a way that represents who they are, they will post reflections about a given topic, moving toward posting thoughts, comments and ideas when they feel it to be relevant.
4. What will we do on the way?  They will follow other student or teacher created blogs, they will learn how to legally embedded information and proper netiquette.
5. How we will assure we are still on the right route, and if we have diverted, how will we make sure we are still able to reach our destination?  We will continue checking back with our original destination. Through conversation and re-examination we will be able to determine if we have fallen off the the map we have created or if we need to take a detour.  This will be a team effort, one that meets the needs of all those involved.

Our blogging journey will begin Wednesday, October 16th at 2:35; fingers crossed there are no delays!

Day 1: Itinerary:

1. Present your ticket: students must write on their ticket what they know about blogging: what is a blog, who blogs, why do people blog?
2. Before we leave the “station”: we will compare and contrast different student blogs: what is appealing about them, what makes them easy to read, what information is included, what security measures have been taken to protect the rights of students and why this security is important, and lastly what do they feel is missing?
3. Buckle-up: we will explain what our expectations are of the students when they blog- respect, confidentiality how and why we must legally protect them.

How does how our blogging journey itinerary look for day 1?

___________________________________________________________

Just creating a page to document my project adventure… Stay tuned!