Wicked Problem Project
By: Joe Buffa
- What is the important educational need that you are seeking to address?
NO TIME FOR
GROUP WORK! The Common Core and best practices call for the use of group work.
I have seen the growth that can occur when students get together and are
allowed to solve a problem or complete a project together; however it is
difficult to find class time to allow for these opportunities. My school poses
a particularly unique situation because we are an early college that accepts
kids from multiple districts. Knowing this it is hard to force students to work
on a project outside of class when it can be very challenging for them to all
find time to meet after school. Therefore, I am hoping to use technology to
better provide these opportunities for my students.
- How you plan to address this educational issue with technology?
I am
proposing using Google Drive as a way to combat the issue of assigning group
work outside the classroom. For an assignment in one of my MAET courses my
group used Google Drive (then Google Docs) as a means of
communication/collaboration and it worked very well. One of the biggest draws
to Google Drive for me is the fact that it is free to use. Given that I am a
part of an urban school, money is always an issue for not only my students but
also our school’s budget. Another draw is that students can share their file
with each other, edit together in real time, and track who has made edits to
the document. This allows for students to work together as long as they have
internet access, they can talk to each other using the comments/chat feature,
and it promotes accountability because group members and myself can see who
made edits to the project (this is a secondary issue with group work... the
group member who decides to do nothing because they do not think the teacher
will know).
- Logistics of solution:
I have
chosen my 10th grade World History students as the guinea pigs for my Google Drive
experiment. Last week I began the process by having students create Gmail
accounts so that they could access Google Drive. I then created a short
presentation assignment that small groups needed to complete and submit to the
class Google Presentation as a way to practice. I had students work on this in
class as they got used to the system so that I could be there to troubleshoot
problems. I think that this made students more comfortable with the break from
the norm and will make future Google Drive assignments run more efficiently.
- Relevant research and resources.
Source 1:
·
Common Core State
Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy In History/Social Studies,
Science, and Technical Subjects
o
Writing Standards for
Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects 6–12
o
Grades 9-10:
§ “6. Use technology, including the Internet, to
produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking
advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display
information flexibly and dynamically.”
o
Citation:
§ Common Core State Standards for English Language
Arts & Literacy in
History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical
Subjects. Common Core State
Standards Initiative, 2010. PDF.
Source 2:
·
Marzano Research on
Cooperative Learning
o
“This suggests that on
the average, the use of cooperative learning by teachers in the action research
studies was associated with a gain in student academic achievement of 30
percentile points over what was expected when teachers did not use cooperative
learning.”
o
Citation:
§ "Cooperative Learning." Researched
Strategies. Marzano Research
Laboratory, Web. 04 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.marzanoresearch.com/research/researched_strategies.aspx>.
Source 3:
·
“You'll find that Google
Docs helps promote group work and peer editing skills, and that it helps to
fulfill the stated goal of The National Council of Teachers of English, which
espouses writing as a process and encourages multiple
revisions and peer editing.”
·
See video embedded in
site.
o
Citation
§ "Google Docs." Google For Educators,
Web. 04 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html>.
- A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.
Last
week (9/27/12 & 9/28/12) I had my 10th Grade World History students create
their accounts so that they would have access to Google Drive. I then created a
brief group presentation assignment in which they were to use the Google Drive
Presentation feature to create a lecture that they made. This was done entirely
in class so that I could troubleshoot any potential problems that arose for
their first time using the system. The next step is to create a group project
that students will create primarily outside the classroom in groups using Google
Drive to collaborate. This assignment will be based on World Religions in which
students will be in pairs/small groups and will be asked to create an
encyclopedia page for each of the major World Religions. They will create this
on Google Drive so that they can both collaborate on the document and
eventually share their findings with their classmates for peer editing.
6.
How would you know you
were successful?
- The quality of the group work will be an indicator of the success rate of the assignment.
- Student performance on the World Religion Unit Test will be an indicator of the success rate of the assignment.
- Student feedback will be an indicator of the success rate of the assignment.
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