Final course reflection on the process of creating your final project

I thought I'd start by pasting the content of a couple emails about this project......

I have this little itch in the back of my head saying "too much". I wouldn't want to overwhelm any of us, teacher or student, with all of the technology part. We're still looking for them to create good content, yeah?

We are putting together a fantastic and exciting project for our 7th graders based on what we've learned and explored in this course. I've posted a more detailed description elsewhere, but the gist of it is that students will blog, create a wiki to be used as an online textbook for future students, and then create video showcasing their ideas for solving a global issue.

It's easy to get a little overwhelmed by it sometimes, though my personal worries are not so much about using the technology myself but rather following through with all the little details, teaching the students again and again and again how to do things (I've just been using google docs with my students and have just about got them realizing that they can't title their google doc "My Essay" and send it to me with their bizare, creative email address---since I don't have any easy (or any at all in some cases) of knowing whose document it is! (On a side note, it's interesting to note that people seem to be chaning emails much less frequently in the last several years. I can remember when people first started emailing 15 or more years ago on a regular basis....seems like everyday I'd get a new email from a friend with the subject, "NEW EMAIL ADDRESS" More and more though people are using that email for so many things and it's such a part of our online identities. Imagine, though when all of this is owned or controlled by one "thing" like google. You skype, amazon, google, blog, wiki, etc., all under the same alias or avatar or whatever.......and how many of us use the same password for just about everything?)

Another thought that occurs to me is are we differentiating? Aren't we expecting the kids to basically all do the same thing at the same time with this project, and perhaps often with computer or technology in general. What about multiple intelligences? The one thing I do like about this project as we're constructing it is the potential of the blogs, which we'll use for the kids to keep track of their experiences as they go through the process of discovering their topics and checking out what's available, explore others' blogs, etc. These blogs that our students create would be an excellent place for them to do some metacognative reflection. What better place for them to write about their learning...though of course it's all very public.

So getting back to the "create good content" concern in the email.......do we want them to create good content, or do we want them to be aware of the journey they're taking to uncover that content for themselves, the stuggle to synthesis all the information, interpret fact from opinion, build their own thoughts and the thoughts they read into a larger content, the juxtaposition of themselves as having a voice in the world and the billions of other voices, how to create meaning out of an existence that is, essentially, meaningless. I'm reminded of a bumper sticker a friend had from a small, western, breathtakingly liberal college. The slogan was, "Education is a journey, not a destination." We'd buy a couple of those bumper stickers, engage in a little crafty cutting and pasting old-school style (as in with scissors and glue) and arrive at the modified slogan: "Education is a journal, not a dissertation."

Another email........

There is just so much we should do with the kids...what would they think if we just said, "look at these links"? Are our students good consumers of info??????maybe some... THESE sites would be great ones for the kids to "mess around" on and get a feel for what blogs are if they don't know. I also like how the blogsoftheworld contains that key element of CONNECTED (as in literally) to the world. I keep getting back to what we talked about on Thursday or Friday or something....a lot of the tech usage skills seems quite developmental, especially as we're asking kids to keep track of sources from a variety of uh, sources, and make it all makes sense. It's all fantastic but it will definitely be a huge learning experience for us all. It's kind of good and bad in that the end result, at least as far as the wiki goes, is "write a report." The journey to getting to that report, and what it represents is the key part, but I wonder if that will show up somewhere...what will distinguish the pages of the wiki from a "write a report" assignment? None of this is to say I'm not 100% stoked about doing all of it!! I just keep coming back to a recent conversation with a parent--"It's amazing what he can do with PowerPoint! All those flying graphics!!! AMAZING!"

I guess the irony is we can use technology to make wonderfully neat looking stuff whereas the acutally educational experience with technology is wonderfully messy.