Sarah Eisenhauer Blakely Lord ECI 546 Project-Based Inquiry Project I.

Rationale for lesson When we first started planning our lesson we realized that it was going to be harder than we had thought. First of all, Zebulon Elementary School does not have a lot of the resources that are found throughout the rest of the Wake County School System. Because the primary purpose of the PBI process was to incorporate technology into several lessons, we had to be creative. We wanted to implement a lesson that was meaningful to the students and was not just a time filler. We finally decided to use an objective that the students were currently working on and struggling with and a technological tool that we knew the students had never used before. It was decided that students would use Vokis to record a book review that would have students ask I Wonder questions, make connections, and also explain why students think everyone should read the book. First of all, we wanted to implement a lesson that would allow students to take what they were already learning about in their literacy block and help them use higher order thinking skills in their final product. We feel that the students that were used in this project were able to use several levels of Blooms Taxonomy, if not all. The first level, remembering, was used with basic recall of story elements from the stories Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and The Lorax. To create a book review students must actually know what the story was about. This involved the next level of Blooms Taxonomy, understanding. Before they even began writing their book reviews, Blakely met with small groups to talk about the book that was read. She then helped them understand the next level, application. Students had to then

take what they know and apply this information into a new way. This, for them, was a book review. Fact and opinion is an objective that is taught in third grade but not until later on. Therefore, within the small groups, Blakely provided the assistance for them to take what they thought about the book and apply it to writing a book review on their own opinion. The hard part came when students were doing the evaluation level of Blooms Taxonomy. They had to take what they had learned about the book and defend why they had this opinion. We specifically asked for them to recall certain parts of the book that made them feel a certain way. We even asked them to make connections to their own lives to make their opinion stronger. Finally, we had them create a final product. Not only did they write their own book reviews, but they had the chance to publish it and allow other classmates to see. We decided to use Voki as our instructional took because we thought that students would enjoy the animation aspect of the tool and also the game-like quality of Voki. We also knew that there was an easy and efficient way of displaying the final outcome of students Vokis on our classroom website, which we felt was how we wanted to display the final outcome of our project. When looking at the objectives that were being taught in third grade, we thought that Voki would be a great tool to help implement during reading strategies. Third grade students specifically focus on asking I wonder questions while reading and making connections. Combining these skills and skills that will be taught later on in the year (fact vs. opinion), Voki allowed us to find a creative way to see if students were able to in fact use these during reading strategies with the selected texts. As for the TPACk theory that we have been discussing in class, this Project-Based Inquiry project allowed us to facilitate every aspect. The technology component of TPACK,

which is often very hard to implement at Zebulon Elementary, was incorporated by using the Flip Cam to film the project, the tape recorder to record students book reviews, the Voki learning tool to upload and show book reviews in creative ways, and the regular computer lab was used to allow students to see each others reviews and to respond to their classmates. The pedagogy component came about with the facilitation of the small groups to aid students in creating their book reports. We also allowed students to respond to each others book reviews once they were posted on the website which encouraged students to use writing skills that they had been taught when posting responses. Content knowledge was incorporated when the teachers were facilitating small groups. Teachers know the kind of responses that are expected when asking I wonder questions and making connections during reading. Therefore, we had to feel confident in these areas before providing students assistance with technology. It is important to be prepared with the content you are teaching and the technology that is going to be used separately before combining them into one lump project. II. Implementation The timeline changed throughout the course of the project for several different reasons. There were the unexpected school reasons, such as field trips, but also because we really challenged students to extend their thinking and to create quality Vokis. When we first began our timeline, we planned to introduce the concept of the Voki and allow them to make their Vokis on October 14th. Students were allowed to log on to Voki and play around with the tool while Sarah explained the project and also helped them navigate the website. The following week, Blakely came into Sarahs classroom to help facilitate small groups in completing their reviews and discussing the content of the book (October 18-20).

This process took longer than we had originally planned. In fact, we had only planned on it taking one or two days to complete. We realized that students were very engaged in the assignment and took it very seriously. In fact, we began to see that students had a lot more to say than we thought they would and had a hard time helping students create concise reviews. We originally had planned to have students record their Vokis with our assistance and upload them on Friday, October 21. However, there was a third grade field trip that day and we realized how chaotic it would be to have third grade students do all of this at once with technology that they were not used to using. Therefore, Blakely came in to Sarahs room the following week , October 25-27, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to help students record their reviews. This allowed us to get their recordings uploaded to their Vokis and to post their Vokis on the class website. On Friday, students went to the computer lab and simply went to the classroom website to listen to their classmates Vokis. They were asked to listen to each others Vokis, which were on separate pages according to the books they chose to review, and to respond about what they may have liked or disliked about the content. III. Challenges It has already been mentioned that time constraints were a big challenge throughout this project. Zebulon is a magnet school and therefore only has 3 hours of instructional time before magnet electives in the afternoon. Therefore, we only have 1 hour and 15 minutes of time to implement the project. It was also noted that the project took longer than we had originally planned. However, we perceived the fact that we had to take longer than originally planned as a success before we realized that students were taking this project seriously. Another challenge was the lack of technology within the school and the lack of

exposure the students had. Students really struggled with basic internet navigation skills and really required direct instructions and assistance from teachers. When writing comments about Vokis, many students took over 10 minutes just to write a one or two lined response. The internet accessibility and speed was also a concern throughout the project. Computers alone were so old that it took several minutes to boot up and log on, which took away precious computer lab time that could have been used to respond to classmates Vokis. IV. Successes Although there were many challenges, the successes made the project completely worth it. Sarahs students absolutely loved having Blakely as a guest in their class. They were also very open minded about the project and did their absolute best on their book reviews. Sarahs students seemed open to the idea of trying new things. They may have never heard of Voki or writing a book review, but they were very excited to try. The students also were very proud of their work when they finished. They enjoyed showing their work to their classmates and a lot of them also showed their parents when they got home. Many students now have told Sarah that even after the project has finished, they have begun using Voki at home for various other reasons. V. What will we do differently next time? When implementing this project next time, we probably would take more consideration into the amount of time that was dedicated to this in class. Small groups and one on one attention was time consuming so we would spread this project out a little longer over the course of a month. We probably would also spend more than just one day in the computer lab responding to each others Vokis. It took students a significant amount of time to

generate a response to a classmate so we would like to allow more time for students to really analyze and evaluate each others final product. We also feel that it would be beneficial to expose students to the idea of constructive criticism and how to effectively generate a criticism that is both helpful and friendly. The responses that were written to the Vokis were all positive responses. While that is an appropriate response for third grade students, we do think that it would be beneficial to go ahead and expose them to challenging each others ideas and to provide a counter argument to why someone liked a specific text. VI. Collaboration Over the course of this project we have learned a lot about ourselves as collaborators and as classmates. We both have had numerous projects where we have been stuck doing the brunt of the work and typically do not normally enjoy group projects. However, this seemed to have been a good match. We were both good at coming up with ideas and contributing to the implementation of the project. We were also good with coming up with different ideas on a whim when a specific plan did not work out. Each person contributed greatly to the project. Blakely is good at the technical aspect, so she was very willing to help create the video while explaining how it is made. Overall, we would consider this project a successful collaboration.