Reading Reflection #6

1. Technology tools encourage students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths by teaching them to be independent. By asking students to assess the credibility of sites we are asking them to thinking more and doing this will help them to develop these assessment skills and work on creating their own thoughts. Tools such as blogs allow students to share their thoughts and become more reflective. As students get more experience with different kinds of projects they will be able to know which type of project they do better with. Another technological tool that helps students to be more self-reflective is the ProfilerPRO website. It is a survey tool that shows individual characteristics within each student.
2. Some ways you can get a students' mind ready for a project is through an organizer such as the K-W-L. This helps them to think about what they already know about the subject they will be working on. What questions they might have about this subject and then they will be able to work independently to find websites that will help answer their questions and teach them new ideas about the said subject. 
3.  The elements of teaching fundamentals first are that it will point the students in the right direction. By using a tool such as the K-W-L students will be able to start thinking about what they will be learning about and what they need to focus on. Students will first need to be able to work independently before starting the project. The teacher can help facilitate this by encouraging the students questions and asking them to dive further into those questions and then to set them up with reliable websites where they can find this information on their own. Another thing they need to know before they start working is what they will be assessed on. Making sure the students have a copy of the rubric that will be used to grade their work is part of the fundamentals.
4. Some ways that teachers can prepare students for using technology in their projects is to make technology readily available for them. Giving students time to explore all their technological resources is important if they are being expected to use technology. Encourage the students who understand certain websites or how to use certain resources to explain it to other students who are struggling. 
5. Some ways to promote inquiry and deep learning is to model to your students how you come up with your own questions about a subject and give them sufficient time in coming up with questions themselves. Once they  have some questions on the subject it is our job as teachers to help them expand on these questions. Often times when a student has one question it can be split up into many different paths or directions so we need to make sure we are making this evident to our students.
6. All of the concepts in this chapter will help with my project because I will need to make sure that I help my students to become technology ready and that they are confident enough to work independently to develop their own substantial questions. All of the things that I have talked about are things that I need to make sure I am working on with my students so that they are skilled with 21st century tools and ready to work on their projects.