Post Reflection

Overall I feel that the unit plan went together nicely. The hardest part of the collaboration was working with someone solely online. I found it difficult to communicate the needs of the school to someone who has not visited the school. I also found it difficult to work with a SLMS since I have never worked in a school with one.

With the limited resources that we had to work with using my school as the setting, Tina did an excellent job of finding online resources that we would be able to use with our traveling laptop cart. I hope to be able to implement some on the ideas that we came up with in years to come. It will be a challenge as the students get used to the laptops (this is the first year we have had them available), but it will become easier. I feel that my original plans that I used in my class this year were supplemented nicely and could be implemented in the class.

I feel that I still have a lot to learn about the SLMS portion of the assignment and I hope that I will be able to learn these things when I have the opportunity to be involved with a school library media center. The most important thing I can take out of this is the importance of team work and listening to the needs of the teacher and SLMS during planning.

Assessment

The assessment for the unit plan flowed easily for me since I have completed the basics of this unit in my current classroom. I was able to use the worksheets that go along with the curriculum for the individual sections and topics. The binary digital code, circuits lab, open/closed circuit drawings and the unit test were all assessments that I completed in my current classroom. These assessments showed the progress of the students in my class and I feel confident that they would be useful in other classrooms.

The final project for the unit plan is to create a poster about on portion of electricity. This is not something that I have used so I will be creating a rubric for the project. Students will be graded on both content and visual appearance of the poster. This activity will follow the final web quest, which will not only assess the students on the topic of electricity but also on the ability to navigate through a website.

All of the assessments that are used in the unit plan can be shared with the students, parents and administrators. The posters (circuit diagrams and final poster) can be displayed in the hallway for the school to view. As for the individual worksheets, simulations, labs and tests, all graded work will be returned to the students who can then share it with their parents. Other teachers and administrators can view the individual grades through the teacher's grade book.

Both Tina and I were able to work on the assessments for the unit plan. I focused on the assessments that go along with the unit as described in the curriculum while Tina focused on the assessments that go along with the technology portion. With all the assessments combined, it covers both the Michigan standards and the technology standards. Although my school does not have a library, we do have one set of classroom laptops with internet. I hope to integrate these new assessments into the unit plan for the next school year.