Signing up for Blogger

If you have completed the project worksheet (see below) and have signed up for a Gmail address it is time to sign up for a blog at blogger.com. Signing for a blog is simple as long as you read the instructions and pay attention to the following suggestions:

• Your blog name should be related to the course or your project. Keep it simple by using your name and a simple description. ie Ariel's Comic Book Project. The blog name can be changed anytime.
  
• The blog URL or address is PERMANENT. It should be something short that you can tell other people like yaniqueproject.blogspot.com or dannymusic.blogspot.com. Your only get to name the first part - YOURADDRESS.blogspot.com
• Email me your blog address at mr.powhida@gmail.com Copy the blog address into the SUBJECT of the email when you are finished signing up. I will be adding it to the class blog links section.
  

Project Worksheet #1

Today you will take your first steps towards working digitally in this class. Many of you have email addresses that you use personally, but today you will sign up for an academic email through Google that you will use for class. Follow the procedure below to sign up for your gmail account. We will be using the gmail account for Blogger, Google docs, Picassa, and more. After you sign up for your Gmail, you need to complete the first project worksheet in Word and email me your responses as a word document attachment.

Steps:

1. Go to www.gmail.com
2. Sign up for the email and provide the required information only.
3. Choose an account name that involves only your name and up to two numbers. You may use your full name, your inititals, and periods and numbers in the account. For example my academic email is mr.powhida@gmail.com
4. When you have finished signing up for the email, your first task will be be to email me your responses to questions about your project idea. These are due by Thursday at the latest.
   
5. When you click on the link, which will take you to the project worksheet, copy and paste the questions into Word. Type your answers into the word file and save it as YOURNAME_1.doc and email me the file as an attachment. Please ask for help or a demo if you do not know how to attach a file.

independent Project Reflection

One of the final steps to completing Digital Portfolio is to write a reflection essay to accompany your independent project. In the essay you should reflect not only on the growth of your project but your own growth as a self-regulated learner. The reflection essay is also an opportunity for those of you who have struggled with the independent project to explain the difficulties and obstacles you have faced.

The reflection essay should cover the project rubric items in greater detail than your quick reflections your wrote down on paper the other day. Additionally, you want to make sure you reflect on your growth as an independent learner; setting goals, conducting research, interviewing people, gathering evidence, experimenting, creating, planning, and reflecting on your task. The reflection essay should cover the following points:

• Introduce and explain your project idea. What problem does the project address? What task, phenomena, stimulus, question, or discrepancy does your project attempt to solve? You should refer to and include any relavant planning information from your blog.
  
• Analyze your efforts to solve the problem, answer the question, or complete the task through your project. Describe what research, experimentation, and/or action you have taken to complete the project. What new knowledge did you acquire through the project? What if any new knowledge did you create through the project? What have been your strengths and weaknesses working on the project?
• Explain your personal and academic connections to the project. What attracted you to the problem, question, or idea for the project? Explain why the project is important to you and also why it is important to the community and/or the world? How could the project help others?
• Explain how your project synthesized your idea, planning, research, and actions into a new creative form. What ways did you create, image, or innovate to produce your project? Remember, synthesis is the form of thinking where you create your own solution to a problem. How did your imagination help you think flexibly or take a risk?
  
• Evaluate your overall commitment to the project. Predict whether your final project will meet all your goals and offer a solution to the problem you have addressed. This is an opportunity to appraise your performance honestly and address how your project could be improved, revised, or finished.
  

The length and depth of your reflection essay is dependent on how well developed your final project will be. If you feel that your project will be incomplete, the reflection essay should be longer and describe in-depth what your portfolio group will not be able to see on your blog and in the final project. At minimum, your reflection essay should be five paragraphs, 12pt times font, double spaced, and reference any sources with MLA style.

Habits of Mind

In February everyone will be participating in a Habits of Mind based portfolio presentation. Juniors will be presenting their portfolios and discussing their work based on Brooklyn Prep's Habits of Mind. Seniors will be sitting in on the conferences to offer their insight and feedback.

Many students have a hard time talking about their work in the context of the Habits of Mind. What exactly are habits of mind?

By definition, a problem is any stimulus, question, task, phenomenon, or discrepancy, the explanation for which is not immediately known. Thus, we are interested in focusing on student performance under those challenging conditions that demand strategic reasoning, insightfulness, perseverance, creativity, and craftsmanship to resolve a complex problem. Not only are we interested in how many answers students know, but also in knowing how to behave when they DON'T know. Habits of Mind are performed in response to those questions and problems the answers to which are NOT immediately known. We are interested in observing how students produce knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce knowledge. The critical attribute of intelligent human beings is not only having information, but also knowing how to act on it. - Arthur L. Costa, Ed. D. and Bena Kallick, Ph.D.

Think back to yesterday's rubric for your project. The first HOM was Perspective and stated "Student has posed a question and offered a possible solution in the form of a creative project."
Many of you are unable to think about your project in the form of a question, but it really just a problem for which the explanation is not immediately known. Think about your project and try to explain it as one of the following tasks. First, we will have to define what these categories are.

• stimulus
• question
• task
• phenomenon
• discrepancy

Now that we have defined these categories, go ahead and leave a comment describing which category your project falls under and why. Please use the rest of your class time to continue solving your problem, answering your question, completing your task, or understanding a phenomenon...

Project Interviews

We need to determine which interview from each group is going to be re-posted here, on the class blog. In your groups, you need to read each group member's interview, leaving a brief comment on each one offering warm or cool feedback about the quality of the answers. Consider the following questions when you read the interviews.

Has the student really answered the question asked of them? Does the answer go deep into the student's experience or does it remain on the surface? Does the answer convey their individuality and personality in some way?

After reading each interview, make sure you leave a one-two sentence comment on each interview. When you are finished reading all the interviews your group must select the most illuminating and interesting interview. After you have reached a decision, leave a comment on the selected interview that states "We select this interview to represent our group." Oh, the student whose interview is selected will received extra credit for the progress report and third marking period grade. Good luck!

Thursday and Friday Agendas

Thursday

Today you will use your class time to meet the SMART goal you set for yourself yesterday. When you have finished working on your goal take a moment at 10:40 to leave a comment on yesterday's post on YOUR blog about what evidence you produced today to meet your goal. I will be checking your blogs and updating the new marking period in Edline, so this comment will count. Please use your time wisely and make some progress.

Friday

Today you will begin an email interview with your new group feedback partner (check the group posters near your table if you forgot!) . The purpose of the interview is to help your partner become aware of their thinking about the project. How does someone become aware of their own thinking? It takes conscious reflection on one's actions, beliefs, knowledge, and ideas. We do this all the time when we make decisions that affect ourselves and others. We also tend to think more about what we say when we talk publicly or in front of others. Your interviews will be published on your blogs and selected ones will be published on the class blog.

We will conduct the interviews by sharing our questions through emails between the interviewer and the interviewee. Today, you will develop specific questions for your interviewee based on the following protocol for two rounds of questions. Your questions should cover the following areas:

Round 1

• Clarify the project goals and purposes. Why are they doing the project? What is important about it? How do they expect it to turn out in the end?
  
• Planning. What actions have they taken so far? What actions do they still need to take? What will be the evidence they produce? How will they collect data? What obstacles or roadblocks do they expect to encounter?
• Taking Action and experimenting. What are the different ways they have been working? What programs, skills, and research have they been doing? What has been new for them?
  
• Assessing and Gathering evidence. What evidence have they produced so far? What have they made? What date have they collected?
  
  
  Round 2
  
• Studying, reflecting, and evaluating. Have they met their goals? What have they learned so far doing the project? Have they learned new information? Have they learned something about themselves?
  
• Modification. Have they had to make any changes to their project or plan? Has their thinking about the subject changed? Would they do anything differently now?
• Revisiting goals and purposes. Does the project still make sense?
  

Write out a specific question based on each • bullet point about the project. Email me your 7 questions to review before we move onto the next step of the project. For example a clarification question might look like: Joseph, why is it important for you to research herpes and STD? What do you want to tell people?

Again I will be checking my email and updating Edline. Your questions must be emailed to me at the end of the period (your emails have the date and time)

New Weekly Goals Post #7

Today you need to reflect on last week's goal by adding a comment. After you've reflected on your progress, you will need to post a special SMART goal for next Tuesday. I will be out of school Thursday and Friday for a project I have been working on. On Thursday, you will have the entire class period to work on your project. To that end, I would like you to set two (2) SMART goals for this week.

• The 1st goal can be your weekly goal to accomplish by next Tuesday.
  
• The 2nd goal must be a goal you will accomplish on Thursday.
  

Using the SMART goal template your second goal will start like this "By the end of 2nd period on Thursday I will........and I will know I have achieved......because........

Next week, when I get back I will be looking for concrete evidence that you met your goal for Thursday. It will count as a 'quiz', so set a goal that you know you can meet and produce some evidence for. For example, Angelica might set a goal to produce THREE new slides for her presentation on Japanese fashion. I will want to see the new slides next week.

On Friday, you will be starting the 1st part of an interview that you will conduct via Google Documents with your new group partner.