Reflective+Journal+for+the+week+of+Dec.+7th.

This has been an extremely busy week (week 6). First, I traveled to Columbus to attend my Coach's Meeting on Tuesday, December eighth. I always come away "refueled" sort of speak because we share ideas and we concerns. The fellowship is rejuvenating as there is rarely time within the regular school day to converse with any adults.

Most of my ARRA Team Members expressed grave concern when they read Part 2 of the course requirements. There is a lot of reading on instructional teaching strategies and then we pick one of those to represent our own styles to create a video. We also have to administer our student needs assessment survey. Because of our Christmas concert, we will not be able to finish the suvey this week. Hopefully, it will be finished by the middle of next week. The sixth graders took it yesterday, Thursday, and the teacher reported to me there were no problems and that it took the students no longer than 20 minutes. I was stressed myself as I misunderstood the directions and thought the survey had to be finished this week and the results tallied and shared on the forum for week six. But after communicating with Jenni, I realized that the survey only needed to be started and that we could post the results next week.

The ARRA team will be staying after school on Monday, December 14th, to learn about a Movie Maker Program our tech assistant uses here at the middle school. It is going to be fun. Time is the stress factor. The school calendar indicates that it is the end of the first semester; exams and grades are all due this time of year. It's also Christmans time and the concert practices have taken over the students' schedules. That's why we can't complete our surveys this week.

I'm looking forward to creating the video as I completed a project like this five years ago while taking my librarian certification classes online from the Univerisity of Indiana. It was extra special because I filmed my grandson who was 3 at the time and read book to him. The Windows Movie Maker added the music and it's a special project for me because of the sentiment for my grandson; the leading actor of the video.

This project will allow me to learn about a different software rather than Movie Maker; I think we are looking at one called "ULead.' I can understand why students love projects such as this which give greater meaning when we put ourselves into the component parts.

One of the [|articles] I read for week 6 included the article, "Why Teach with with Project Learning:" written by the Edutopia staff, explained that utilizing the Project Based Learning strategy helps students to remember what they have learned because this strategy allows students to be active and engaged in their discovery. It also allows for collaborative grouping and students are graded upon a product or presentation. Project Based Learning also allows teachers to easily incorporate technology in the research process component. I found that using the Project Based Learning strategy in my Language Arts Classroom also inspired and invigorated me as well as my students.