Reading Reflection #4

                                              Reading Reflection #4

          Project-based learning requires a lot of planning by us teachers if projects are to be beneficial to the students in our classrooms; a lot of our planning should be spent deciding what topics we will pick for our students to explore. We must use critical thinking to bypass the multitudes of pitfalls that we could encounter in picking a project for our classroom; for example, we must make sure that the activities of the project do not consume so much of our students' time and energy that there is little space left over for any productive learning outcomes. Another pitfall is that we will be so excited to introduce technology into our classrooms that we use it in ways that are not really that helpful; integrating technology is only useful when its enriches or adds to a project by itself. 

          Even if you are evaluating a project designed by another teacher and find that there are some pitfalls, you can always revise their ideas into an original plan for your classroom. We teachers must make sure that we create plans that take students down diverse learning paths, are based on requiring our students to research and inquire for answers, and go beyond school into real-life situations. We should not design projects just so that children have an alternative way of learning to the traditional textbook scenario, but so that students learn by doing and know that their work has real-life benefits.

         Creating and designing a project may be a lot of work, but I think that taking this time will really reap multiple benefits in the classroom. My group spent a good amount of lab time a few weeks ago just thinking over our concept map for our project and making sure we had all pieces to the puzzle in order to make our project of designing a dessert cookbook a success. So too must we be willing and prepared to work when we are designing projects for our future students.