Fables in Voki Final Project Reflection - LBSC 742 Tracy Jeffcott & Melissa McDonald December 8, 2011
Reflection describes 2 or more lessons that you have learned in (collaborating, coordinating, or cooperating) with the teacher(s) and LMS in your setting, and provides explanation or examples that help make these lessons clear. Having had a positive experience on our collaborative teacher presentation, we looked forward to working together again. Tracy had the basic outline of the lesson from the MCPS 3rd grade English curriculum guide. We discussed tweaking it so that the students had a chance to use a Web 2.0 tool to create the final product. We decided to use Voki.com to not only introduce a new technology to the students, but also to add exciting visual and audio element to the lesson. Voki.com is a student-friendly tool that will encourage fun and creativity, while allowing the students to learn about and explore a web-based technology in a structured environment. In addition, we have found that students (especially the special needs student in the class) respond well to assignments completed on the computer. Tracy and I had taken LBSC 646 (Young Adult Literature) together in spring 2010 and had been introduced to this Web 2.0 tool when we had to use it for an assignment that required a presentation using only Web 2.0 tools with no “live” speaking or introductions, and it inspired us to use this idea on our lesson plan. Tracy is an experienced elementary school teacher, and I learned much from her calm, clear teaching methods and classroom management skills. Lessons learned: use what you know and don’t reinvent the wheel.
Reflection describes 2 or more challenges faced in (collaborating, coordinating, or cooperating) with the teacher(s) and LMS in your setting, with illustrative example(s) and how you overcame them. As before, our biggest challenge was finding time to meet in person. We finally met in person on Tuesday prior to our class to go over the lesson plan, the PowerPoint presentation, and checklist and adjust each as necessary. Although GoogleDocs and e-mail are great tools, face-toface collaboration is the best! Since Tracy was experienced at creating rubrics, she took on that challenge to create the six word summary rubric. I like to create PowerPoint presentations, and experiment with colors and animation, so I took on the challenge of creating that. I also created our Voki example. Lastly, when we met for the hour on Tuesday, we were able to give immediate feedback and fine tune our lesson plan, PowerPoint, and Voki checklist -- and made corrections directly into the documents as we discussed them.
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Reflection describes whether and how you would revise, or approach the project differently if given the opportunity to work again in planning the same unit/lesson. I believe we would read the assignment and the tip sheet more carefully to ensure we had not missed anything before turning in the assignment. We found that although we mentioned information during the lesson presentation, we did not necessarily include it in our lesson plan, and spent a considerable amount of time, proofreading, editing, revising, adding data, and editing again. We were pleased with our final products - our lesson plan, PowerPoint slide show, supplemental forms, and our in class presentation. After class, I heard positive comments from our classmates, and how they would incorporate some of our ideas into their lesson! What a compliment to us and our efforts!
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