Julie, Reflection #6

http://www.edutopia.org/images/movies/journeys.jpg

The video case that I chose was on the March of the Monarchs. Journey North involves thousands of students in monitoring migration patterns of butterflies and other species. Students would have pen pals in mexico and they would write back in forth, discussing the migration patterns of Monarch buttlerflies. The video shows clips of this journey while the teacher talks about how she is able to also meet the state standards while intergrating other subjects as well such as: Math, Science, Psychology, English and Social Studies.
Flowing the monarchs is only a part of this comprehensive based learning activity called Project North, where they will also be following the migration patterns of several differnt animals as well. This is only one part of Journey North and is delivered for free to schools across the world via Internet. As they track these different animals, the students will be adding personal observations to the global north data base.
They are using the internet to communicate to people all over the world. This project is definately student centered because the teacher only introduced the topic to them and what they will be doing over the next several weeks. Everything after that was up to them to observe and communicate their observations via internet to other students across the world. The teacher was their to help keep them on task. They also include an online geographical game called "The Mystery Class".
I definately agree that the technology makes the lesson more engaging because the students were able to write to their pen pals but they were also able to communicate with just a click of a button using the internet. The students were able to post their own observations and pictures in seconds using the Internet and students found this was way more interesting than just a letter in the mail every two weeks.
This Project Based Learning "Journey North" has been around for years and everything you need to know is posted on the internet. The teacher needs to make sure that he/she always has a backup plan in case any of the technology they were using crashed. Also, like in the video clip, teachers need to be thinking about how they are able to intergrate other subjects in to this one lesson. The teacher had mentioned that their letter writing was improving their writing skills much more because they were cautious when writing back to their pen pals and wanted to make it sound and look good.
I think that through classroom reflection and communication is a great way to assess your students as a whole. Having students keep a personal journal of their own obersvations is also a great way to assess your students.
Our society is growing more and more through technology, so anytime you are able to intergrate technology into the curriculum, you are only improving your students cognitive skills and they are able to keep up with the rest of the world. Technology is always changing, so it is a big challenge for teachers to keep updated so they are able to keep technology part of the curriculm.