What's Important

From our Great Task, these are the things I'll remember to improve upon:

-PROOF READING!
While Bowen conceded early on that it was his fault, I found a few sentences of my own making about as much sense as an Eskimo trying to speak Hebrew. Proofreading the actual example of a great task would be a good idea for showing some kind of finished product.

-Include a rubric for assessing the use of technology
I thought about this one for a while after class and came to the conclusion that providing a rubric that assesses our use of technology would greatly help our peer review. I also figured that including this same rubric for the students would benefit the class as a whole. I could discover how each class battles with technology and determine whether or not my intended uses for technology are appropriate to the students.

-Make the written component more specific
This one is my fault. The IO version of this assignment requires it to be a research based assignment. However, when I saw it being done in my first year practicum, it was an assignment that followed each chapter of the book "Night" by Ellie Wiesel. In one sense, we proved that this assignment can work in a myriad of ways to benefit the students. However, for the purpose of peer review, we could have tightened things up by explaining the rules a little better.

-Pre-approved pictures in work
This is one aspect of the assignment our team did not discuss. I imagine it was a case of not thinking "how deviant could our students possibly be when picking out pictures off the internet?" I do believe that parameters should be set, depending on what novel/part of history you are covering in your class. However, I do not believe that the teacher should have to check up on the students and the images they are using because it will rob them of some of their creativity. I believe that if the parameters are set properly, the students will choose images accordingly....hopefully...

Now, what we did that sparked some positive feedback:

-Made history cool and personal
I agree that this assignment allows students to choose a perspective outside of their own. In addition, students are encouraged to bring many of their own attitudes into these historical events to truly live them.

-Lots of room for creativity with liberating constraints
Gotta give students freedom from complete freedom.

-Cross curricular connections
Every Humanities/Language Arts teachers dream.

-Adaptable to many grade levels

-Gives students a reason to write something about themselves and the assignment instead of just for the sake of writing.

For all of those students who don't particularly like English Lit, this is a way for them to find a reason to write. It gives them the ability to describe something that is important to them because they are living the experience.