IT6740+Project+Description

Lisa Reed and Kathryn Wolfington IT6740 Learning Processes
 * Demonstration Project**

We created a community service project that involves many aspects of this Learning Processes class. Students worked in cooperative groups while focusing on technology that helped them learn about a chosen non-profit organization. One day this spring, the 8th graders volunteered for a day at their non-profit organization. Following the visit, groups were given four choices from which to create a technology project. This was about a three month unit and involved both 8th grade teams at Evergreen Middle School. It encompassed all subject areas while being technology-rich and allowing students to work with their friends. This unit also exposed students to the world of volunteering.
 * Project Idea:**

In an effort to incorporate technology standards into the 8th grade curriculum, this unit has been created and is being conducted with the guidance of NETS for Students (2007). A majority of our objectives derive from these standards.
 * Objectives:**

Students will volunteer at a non-profit location for three hours. Students will select and use technology applications effectively and productively. Students demonstrate creative thinking through the use of a chosen technology application. Students will work with peers to use technology in all stages of the unit. They will interact, collaborate, and publish a variety of digital environments and media.

Our 8th graders think that they are tech savvy because they text message, use Facebook, and have an iPhone; however, they have had little exposure to technology applications that could assist them in being successful in school. They react positively to technology and are excited to learn new and different ways to present material.
 * Describe the Learners:**

It is also important to note that Evergreen is filled with many affluent families. A lot of our students have a unique view of the world, and this project has been designed to expose them to realities outside their comfort zone.

During the Community Service Project at Evergreen Middle School, 8th graders worked in cooperative groups to research and choose a non-profit organization at which they spent a day volunteering. In the weeks leading up to Community Service Day, students learned about various organizations and chose one that really interested them. Students contacted their organization, scheduled the visit, and made travel arrangements for their volunteer experience. Following Community Service Day, students created a technology project to share their learning with their peers.
 * Instructional Strategies and Learning Processes:**

This project has been a part of the Team 8-1 Advisory curriculum for three years, and this spring was the first time that all students on both 8th grade teams were involved. As the project expands to include an additional 120 students, our 8th grade teachers have found that we need to enrich our curriculum.


 * Learning processes:**

During the Community Service Unit, students are exposed to several learning processes. Below we highlight a few of those processes and explain their importance to the unit.

1. **Collaboration:** The entire unit requires students to collaborate in cooperative groups.This is an important part of the learning process for this unit. "When a learner shares images with his peers, he will not only get new cognitive ideas. He will also gain confidence and begin to recognize the progress he has already made. Without interactions with his peers, the learner may well not realize where he stands." (Zull p. 239) Students work together to plan, reasearch and create during this unit, doing so gives students a variety of perspectives about what is being learned throughout the unit.

2. **Experience:** According to Zull "...it still seems that a teacher's best chance is to begin with concrete examples. The abstract and theoretical have less meaning if no neuronal networks are associated with the concrete experiences of the learner." (p. 103) The culminating activity of this Community Service Unit allowed students to get their hands dirty in a real world experience. This experience provided students the opportunity to give meaning to the many lessons in class on the importance of community service. The concrete experience was also important for raising students' awareness about what goes on in the world around them.

3. **Active testing:** In many ways this unit allows students to use active testing. "In fact, it seems that life is a continual process of active testing of our ideas and hypotheses. Learning comes from those continual adjustments that we make in our actions as we have new experiences and new ideas." (Zull p. 207) As students learned how to use new technology applications they were actively testing ideas for how to make certain things work.

4. **Reflection:** The final project for this unit provided students with a time to reflect on what they learned throughout the unit. "We need reflection to develop complexity. We may start with a direct and and sometimes relatively simple concrete experience, but that experience grows richer as we allow our brain the freedom to search for those still unknown connections. And as we find those connections, our brain changes. We attach the networks of our present experiences to those that represent our past experiences. The art of directing and supporting reflection is part of the art of changing a brain. It is the art of leading a student toward comprehension." (Zull p. 164)


 * Materials/Media Rationale:**


 * Wordle:** Students will research their non-profit organization before Community Service Day and create a tag cloud that represents their destination and its purpose. Students will present their tag clouds to their peers while explaining what their community service location stands for and what they expect to do the day they are volunteering there.


 * Google Earth and Google Maps:** Students will use this on-line tool to locate their non-profit organization and get driving directions to give to their driver the day of the volunteer visit.


 * Wikispace:** This tool will be used as a social networking tool for students, as well as a collaborative tool for the team of teachers involved.

1. Digital Story of their Community Service Day (using **Photostory 3**) 2. Comic Strip Public Service Announcement (using **Make Beliefs Comix**) 3. Brochure about their non-profit organization (using **Microsoft Word & Picnik**) 4. Slideshow Presentation about their non-profit organization (using **Google Docs**)
 * Post Project:**

Students will choose the format in which they complete their final project. Giving them choice will create buy-in and increase motivation. We have tried to provide students with a variety of applications that will apply to multiple intelligences. Groups can choose to complete a final project that best fits their volunteer experience as well as their ability

//How we will evaluate the student groups:// All 8th grade teachers will work together to create a rubric that can be used to assess group collaboration and the final project. This is how we will record grades in our gradebooks. We decided that this will count as a project grade in all four core classes (science, math, language arts, and social studies).
 * Evaluation:**

Students will give us feedback regarding this unit and its entire process by completing a Google survey.

//How you will evaluate our project and learning:// In order to see if our objectives were met, we suggest that you check out the final technology projects that the groups created at the end of our unit. You can find examples in our Community Service wikispace on the Project Samples page. A second location where you could find out what our students and how they viewed this project would also be in our wikispace on the Student Feedback Survey page. Here you can click on the link at the top of the page to view the student feedback we received from the unit.

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 * Projects that Cross Classes:**