Final Project Reflections

For the final project on this course, I had the wonderful opportunity yet again to work with my fabulous 7th grade humanities colleagues, most of whom are also taking this course.

As what has been a highlight of the Tech Cert program so for, we've been given the chance to take something we're doing in class and take it to the next level tech wise, and hopefully learning wise with the students as well.

7th grade is the only grade in middle school where the kids are exposed to geography and mapping skills, so our challenge as relatively newly hired teachers (three years now) was to take a curriculum grounded in those skills, yet lacking meaningful assessment tools and higher level thining tasks. Together with team 7, we created some new learning tasks for the students both using technology and hopefully also asking the students to go "deeper" with their thinking.

The result was extensive use of "SmartMovie" type software. Students each took on one land form (atoll, volcano, glacier, etc.) and created a short SmartMovie detailing the land form. All of the clips were posted on YouTube. This served as a wonderful study guide and learning tool for the students.

I can't say with certainty that the students learned more or in a deeper way. That of course would take legitimate research. The did however help each other create more easily accessible resources. We will definitely keep the project going, and hopefully build on it, for years to come.