The Processing Phase 6.7.4

Project based teaching is one of the most interesting ways through which effective teaching and learning can take place. I have gained an insight into supporting the learning process when I learned that:
A project helps to bring reality to what is being taught. It helps to link to the community or brings the students' imagination that without them, the world would feel a pinch since no body would solve a given disturbing situation to the society. At first, students used not to have any say or could not add any voice to what was being taught and lessons turned or turn out to be boring to the learners. Projects based learning also improves constructivism through collaborative groups and promotes the 21st Century skill. It helps to fully integrate technology in teaching and best swings to the notion that 'If they can not learn the way we teach them, let us teach them the way they can learn'. Therefore all digital tools can be used when teaching or learning by both the teacher and the learners.

To be honest, I have not been using a project based method of teaching. How ever there are some elements of it which I have been using either by coincidence or by error. In this CCTI module I have experienced the Zunal.com website which helps to simplify the teaching work. It is how ever taxing when one is still learning it but after mastering it, it is one of the best ways of designing a project based lesson. The gathering phase more specifically helps to curate sites for students-just like as a parent initiates a toddler  child into the real walking exercise, when he walks then can run-it is exactly the same case that students are then advised to look for more URLS or links to explore more of a topic under study. 

END

Pros and Cons of Pre-researching Resources For Learners 6.6.4

The pros and cons of pre-researching resources for learners are that:On the side of the Pros; there is critical thinking, creativity, sharing collaboration and communication not only from the teacher to his students but also from and among students themselves and among teachers as colleagues working on the project lesson. But it is almost a must to be ethical, to stay safe and manage risks in the digital world, and as well use technology to participate in educational, cultural and economic activities.

Whereas the Cons include; the fact that risk management in the digital world is quite big- as students are advised to look for more sites, they may open hoax URLS or misuse the web in for opening unbecoming media sources which leave digital footprints. Also if the students are too lazy, they may only utilize what the teacher gave them and do not look for more sources of information on the web

The advice I would you give to my learners when implementing a WebQuest if I require them to do additional research is that they should get information that is:

a)    Current with accessible URLS from the web,

b)    Credible information,

c)    Accurate/relevant information and it should be in line with the findings from the field or meet community needs.

What I have discovered is that technology simplifies teaching, helps to exchange ideas and provides more information beyond what the teacher would have had if he used analogue ways of teaching.

END

6.5.4 Role play as a form of learner engagement

I have learned that role play as a form of learner engagement increases the students' level of eagerness and keenness to participate through observation. It also produces empirical evidence of a change in learner behavior since each individual at least throws a building block to knowledge through a notion of 'think as you apply'. Leaner engagement through role play requires a checklist and once it is tightly followed or revised where need be, systematic results are expected at the end of the lesson.

Role play helps to prepare quality of questions from the teacher in the task phase or at least students may pose out quality questions. This does not only help them to discover new phenomena but also replenishes the teachers' knowledge since every situation is a learning situation.

For sure I have ever engaged my learners into role play but using 'try and error' and some times doing it ineffectively due to the exorbitant number of students we teach in our class rooms. And some times the topics under study my prove to be difficult in posing the 'role play' technique when engaging learners. It can be done by simply unfolding the task and then assign each individual or small groups of individuals roles which at the end tailor as a group and come up with a new creation to the body of knowledge. 

Challenge Phase 6.4.4

There is no project without a challenge and therefore the challenge phase forms the core of the project-based learning. Learners understand most if they are challenged, more especially if they can add a voice to what is being taught to them. in this case, a teacher has to be more creative in order to meet the learners' reasoning and experience/mental processes.

The introduction phase unfolds every thing that the lesson will be about but most importantly, even if the introduction is captivating and meets the learners' level of interest and understanding, they may give out wrong answers or wrong findings in case the task set by the teacher in the challenge phase was not clear to them.
It actually feels good when you capture your students' attention, imagination and interest towards your lesson or project. It then means that you the teacher together with your students have not only contributed to the existing body of knowledge, but have also solved and existing problem which was facing the community. 

6.3.4 Awebquest in relation to the 21st Century thinking skills,

Initially I never had any idea about what a webquest was and how it looked like. However after reading in this CCTI course and through the Internet exploration, I found out that a web quest has 6 core elements of which if well followed, the learner and the reader can get to comprehend the learned content and be able to get a permanent change in his or her way of understanding and articulating issues.

Such steps include: the introduction which must be captivating to the learners, the task, and the the process/ procedure to be followed. In some cases, the process is usually put in the teacher/ instructor's page in case one is using www.zunal.com to prepare the webquest. The resources form part of the webquest but some times they may either be extracted from the Internet or from the books that were consulted in the process of the webquest formation.

The evaluation follows and it is advisable to develop a rubric in order to guide the learneroabout what is expected from him or her. then the conclusion sums it up.

I used http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=325229 to prepare one webquest and I found out that several 21st Century skills are embedded in the process of creating a webquest. They included all the items of the research methodology right from the constuctivism, up to the creative higher order thinking skills. These would come in in the part of collaboration and communication,as the learners use computers and the Internet to embrace technology in their learning.

MY PROBLEM-SOLVING PROJECT IDEA: A REFLECTION OF 6.2.4

My initial project idea has the title: CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF LANDSLIDES ON COMMUNITIES IN KYOKYEZO.

Some of my initial ideas about how I will engage my learners in this project:

•         Me-the teacher, together with my colleagues in the Geography department (fellow teachers) and my students of Senior 5 will visit the Kyokyezo community area in Kabale District which is prone to landslides first.
•     We will take pictures using digital cameras or smart phones since phone are allowed to students by our school while outside school in for field work.
•        They will explore the area, measure the landslide scars in order to come up with the temporal and spatial dynamics of landslides by the use of a GPS machine and a tape measure. I will guide my students on how to use DNR GPS MINNESOTA, a GIS computer program which is freely provided on the Internet, to generate the Kyokyezo area shape files, together with Arc Map version 1.0.1.
•       They will interview the community members to get the first hand information about the causes and effects of landslides. Then they will generate mitigating measures to the problem together with some community members.
•       My students will create simple photo grids and also capture small videos from the field and then share them via watsapp, Facebook, or any other social media. ‘If they cannot learn the way we teach them, let us teach them in the way they can learn’.
•    The area is prone to landslides and its immediate assumed causes are mostly the reckless human activities.
•         My class of Senior 5 will study various causes of landslides and the associated effects and then come up with possible solutions together with the Kyokyezo residents in order to help them out of the landslide problem.

What the project is about:

•   In order to understand landslide generating processes by my students, there is a need to characterize factors that underpin landslide hazards in Kabale district.
•   This can also provide an understanding and easy approach for the planners to design policies and strategies needed for landslide risk reduction options that can minimize the social, economic and environmental losses and property destruction due to landslide occurrences on communities in the district. 
•   Our study will produce a landslide vulnerability map and clusters out hotspot areas that are prone to landslide hazards.
•   This is expected to give an opportunity to the Planners to come up with a professional cost effective way of zoning areas prone to landslide hazards.
•   The recommendations of this study are expected to concentrate on providing control and mitigation measures which are needed for designing and formulation of policies and strategies for proper addressing of landslide hazard reduction in Kyokyezo-Kabale district.

The selected curriculum objectives include:
By the end of the lesson, students should be able to;

• Understand and describe the concept of landslides correctly.
• Measure, quantify and explain the types of landslides at Kyokyezo.
• Characterize the causes of landslides on the slopes of Kyokyezo ridges.
• Evaluate the damages from landslides to the community.
• Find out the coping mechanisms for the effects of landslides in Kyokyezo area.

The Specific 21st Century skills and higher-order skills are. 

•          Students will be given brain teasing critical thinking questions to solve the problems at hand.
•           Communicate in order to understand and spread ideas.
•          Students will collaborate through working with others
•          Students will create high quality work at the end of the project and then present a report.

The study will involve a field tour to the area-South Western Uganda
and it will follow the ethos of the revised ASSURE lesson plan.

END

6.1.4 ESSENCE OF PROJECTS

The Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning

Every project-based learning has basically seven essential pillars which make the learning meaningful not only to the learners but also the general public; since the students are supposed to serve the community when they complete school time. The seven essentials are as discussed below:

1. A need to know;

  Teachers can powerfully activate students' need to know content and actually make real world products by launching a project with a doable entity that engages interest and initiates questioning. A doable entity can be almost anything:  a field trip, a video or a lively discussion. In contrast, announcing a project by distributing a packet of papers is likely to turn students off; it looks like a setting for some busywork to come.

Many students find schoolwork meaningless because they don't perceive a need to know what they're being taught. They are unmotivated by a teacher's suggestion that they should learn something because they'll need it later in life, for the next course, or simply because it's likely to be on the coming exams. With a compelling student project, the reason for learning relevant material becomes clear. the student develops a feeling that;'I need to know this to meet the challenge I've accepted'.

2. A driving question or challenge;

  A good driving question captures the nucleus of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge. The question should be provocative, open-ended, complex, and linked to the core of what you want students to learn.

A project without a driving question is like research work without a problem statement. Without a problem statement, a reader may fail to pick out the main point a writer is trying to make; but with a problem statement, the main point is unmistakable. Without a driving question, students may not understand why they are undertaking a given project. 

3. Students' voice and choice;

A project-based learning is important in many ways but mostly, in terms of making a project feel meaningful to students, the more voice and choice, the better. 

However, teachers should design projects with an element of student choice that fits their own style and students.

 learners can as well select what topic to study within a general driving question or choose how to design, create, and present products. As a core to the project, teachers might provide a limited menu of options for creative products to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed by choices. However, students can also decide what products they will create, what resources they will use, and how they will structure their time. Students could even choose a project's topic and driving question and the teachers remain as typical guides to the students.

4. The 21st century skills;

Projects give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life. This exposure to authentic skills meets the second criterion for meaningful work. A teacher in a project-based learning environment explicitly teaches and assesses these skills and provides frequent opportunities for students to assess themselves.

5. Inquiry and innovation;

Students find project work more meaningful if they conduct real inquiry, which does not mean finding information in books or websites and pasting it onto a poster.

 In real inquiry, students follow a trail that begins with their own questions, leads to a search for resources and the discovery of answers, and often ultimately leads to generating new questions, testing ideas, and drawing their own conclusions. 

Real inquiry comes innovation where a new answer to a driving question, a new product, or an individually generated solution to a problem. The teacher does not ask students to simply reproduce teacher or textbook provided information in a pretty format.

To guide students in real inquiry, teachers refer students to the list of questions they generated after the doable entity. A teachers should guide them to add to this list as they discover new insights. The classroom culture should value questioning, hypothesizing, and openness to new ideas and perspectives.

6. Feedback and revision;

Formalizing a process for feedback and revision during a project makes learning meaningful because it emphasizes that creating high-quality products and performances is an important purpose of the endeavor. 

Students need to learn that most people's first attempts don't result in high quality and that revision is a frequent feature of real-world work.

In addition to providing direct feedback, the teacher should guide students in using rubrics or other sets of criteria to critique one another's work. 

7. A publicly presented product;

Schoolwork is more meaningful when it's not done only for the teacher or the test. When students present their work to a real audience, they care more about its quality. 

Once again, it's "the more, the better" when it comes to authenticity. Students might replicate the kinds of tasks done by professionals—but even better, they might create real products that people outside school use.

 I sincerely acknowledge with special thanks, the works of John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller

END