PART D - Findings and Implications

WPP Part D - Findings and Implications

Implementation:

The project launched Monday without a hitch.  The students took very well to locating land formations, earthquakes and volcanoes.  They were quick to get busy researching what caused all these formations as well.  They did very well dividing up duties with their partners as well.  Things seemed to get going well.  There were a couple issues the first day with students not saving their files to the correct locations on the school server but they were ironed out.  We have decided to extend the deadline for the project a couple days to make sure they are completing a quality project and not feeling rushed.

As I have been observing and working with students I have enjoyed listening to their conversations about plate boundaries, locations of countries and different types of volcanoes and earthquakes.  Just hearing what they are talking about and researching I am extremely confident that students are engaged and learning more than they ever had about Earth's plates and boundaries, earthquakes and volcanoes.  They are also working on public speaking skills with their narration, writing in their story boards, collaboration skills with their partners and geography!

Future Projects:

In the future I would approach this project the exact same way, lots and lots of preparation on my part.  When you read about projects vs. project based learning this project is really meeting the definition of project based learning and I know it is not a fluff project, there is authentic learning taking place.  People would benefit from knowing that projects like this require a great deal of prep and practice by the teacher.  You actually have to walk through he project as if you were the student and write the instructions as if they were meant for someone who had no idea how to use the technology.  Another key was that I made a sample tour to model the project for the students.   The sample I made for the kids was really key for inspiring kids to extended to high levels for their project.  This project will most definitely be repeated in the future.  One change that could be made would be to create a pre-made folder with all the tour locations in it so students didn't have to spend time locating them they would just need to research things about them, the plate boundaries that made that feature, etc.  This would save some time on the project and still meet the objectives of the project.

Pictures of Students Working: