ED303 Journey North Project

Journey North Semester Long Project

This project will be completed as an individual project.

Effective use of technology often means integrating technology into larger curricular projects. The Journey North Project is an example of a large curricular project. But with many large projects, it can be implemented in your classroom in a number of different ways.Tying individual lessons together to form a unit based around a theme can be part of a thematic unit that integrates technology.

During the course of the semester, you will hand in eight lesson plans that use technology. These lesson plans will form the basis of your Journey North Project. Each lesson plan will consist of four parts:

A one paragraph summary of the lesson.
A listing of Maryland Learner Outcomes that the lesson fulfills
A one paragraph critique of the lesson from the perspective of the Healy textbook.
A complete citation of the source of the lesson.

When you hand in these lesson plans, they will not be graded. However, the lesson plans will be discussed in class. Additionally, if the lesson plans do not include the required elements at the time they are handed in, points will be deducted from your final Journey North Project grade. Each lesson plan should be written with proper spelling, grammar and usage; typed in a word processor, double-spaced with a 12-point font and 1-inch margins.

1. The Lesson

The lesson itself should relate to the Journey North Project. It does not have to be an orginal lesson. In fact, it is expected that most of your lessons will come from the Journey North web site. You should find a lesson and write a one-paragraph summary of the lesson. At this stage, you are not required to describe how it fits into the Journey North Project, but you should keep that in mind for the final submission of your project.

2. The Maryland Learner Outcomes

As a teacher, everything you do should be linked to the Maryland Learner Outcomes. You should pick a grade level for all your lessons and match the lessons to the specific outcomes.

3. The Critique

As you know, the Healy textbook advocates appropriate uses of technology in the classroom, and it criticizes most uses of technology in the classroom as, at best, superficial, and, at worst, harmful. You should imagine what Dr. Healy would say about the lesson you have chosen and critique the lesson based on Dr. Healy's advice. For most of the lessons, you will not have read the entire book by the time you turn in the lesson, so your critique can be limited to what you have read.

4. The Citation

You do not have to write original lessons (although the summary of the lesson should be your own). Whenever you use someone else's work, you must cite it. I am not picky about citation formats, but I am adamant about the need to cite. If you are citing a web page, be sure that you have a complete and accurate URL, preferably copied and pasted directly from your browser.

The Final Submission

Toward the end of the semester, you will hand in your complete Journey North Project (see the Syllabus for the deadline). Most of this project will consist of the lesson plans already submitted. Be sure that the lesson plans are numbered to indicate when they were handed in. In addition to the lesson plans, you should write approximately two to three pages describing an overall plan for the Journey North Project in your classroom with an indication of what Dr. Healy would find positive about this use of technology.

You should be thinking about this as the beginning of a unit plan. Imagine that you will be going into a classroom next Fall or Spring and using the Journey North Project as a major experience in your classroom. What are you going to do with your students? In class, we have done the kinds of things you might choose to do with your students, but those are just examples. Many more examples are provided on the Journey North web site: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/. Think about how you will engage your students for one to six weeks.

You will include in your project supplementary material. This will be examples of things that you might use with your students. At a minimum, this should be the HyperStudio stack that we will work on in class and the spreadsheet that we will work on in class. Be sure that you hand in electronic (possibly submitted via email) and paper versions of this supplementary material.

The key to this project is tying it into your curriculum. For example, the spreadsheet we will do in class is not interesting because students learned how to make spreadsheets but because of ties to the math curriculum and science curriculum. That is why your lessons are tied to the Maryland Learner Outcomes. In the ideal situation, you will think about specific outcomes you want to meet and find lessons that meet those. In reality, you are likely to do a little of that combined with a little finding lessons and then seeing what outcomes they meet.

Note that not everything you do is not necessarily tied to technology. You will, for example, want to think about what role real butterfly observations play in the project. These will be important if your hypothetical school is in an area where the monarchs visit (more than the Loyola campus).

When you submit your project, you should create one document with a cover page followed by your overall description of the unit, followed by your lesson plans. All writing should be your own original work with sources of lesson plans clearly cited. All pages (except the cover page) should be numbered. All writing should follow correct usage, grammar, and spelling. Each page should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins using a 12-point font size. Printouts of supplementary material should be attached to your document, but they do not have to be on numbered pages.

Grading

Meeting these criteria in a minimal way will earn the grade of C. Grades of A and B are reserved for excellent and very good work. The following chart, while not a formal rubric, will give you a better idea of grading for this project:

The kinds of things that will lead to an A:

A clear plan of action for your students that will engage them over a long period of time.
A clear indication to me that you could walk into a classroom and use the Journey North Project with your students.
Excellent lesson ideas that include ideas from class, from the web site, and from your own imagination.
Clear ties to one or more areas of the curriculum.
Outstanding supplementary material that includes the things we worked on in class and possibly but not necessarily other things.
A clear understanding of appropriate uses of technology in the classroom as described in the textbook.

The kinds of things that will lead to a B:

An overall plan for the unit that has the potential to engage students.
Good lesson ideas that include ideas from class and from the web site.
Good supplementary material that includes the things we worked on in class.
A basic understanding of appropriate uses of technology in the classroom as described in the textbook.

The kinds of things that will lead to a C (or lower):

Disjointed unit plan with lesson ideas that are OK individually but don't hold together as a unit.
Lesson ideas that come directly from class and the web site with little thought as to how they would fit into your unit or your future classroom.
Minimal supplementary material that includes the things we worked on in class but shows little effort in making something that looks good.
Supplementary material that does not completely work.
Little understanding of appropriate uses of technology in the classroom.

What to Hand in

If you are handing in supplementary material on disk, your project should be placed in an envelope so the disk does not get separated from the paper.

Return to ED303 Home Page.

This page was prepared by Dr. David M. Marcovitz.

Last Updated: August 28, 2003

The kinds of things that will lead to an A:	A clear plan of action for your students that will engage them over a long period of time. A clear indication to me that you could walk into a classroom and use the Journey North Project with your students. Excellent lesson ideas that include ideas from class, from the web site, and from your own imagination. Clear ties to one or more areas of the curriculum. Outstanding supplementary material that includes the things we worked on in class and possibly but not necessarily other things. A clear understanding of appropriate uses of technology in the classroom as described in the textbook.
The kinds of things that will lead to a B:	An overall plan for the unit that has the potential to engage students. Good lesson ideas that include ideas from class and from the web site. Good supplementary material that includes the things we worked on in class. A basic understanding of appropriate uses of technology in the classroom as described in the textbook.
The kinds of things that will lead to a C (or lower):	Disjointed unit plan with lesson ideas that are OK individually but don't hold together as a unit. Lesson ideas that come directly from class and the web site with little thought as to how they would fit into your unit or your future classroom. Minimal supplementary material that includes the things we worked on in class but shows little effort in making something that looks good. Supplementary material that does not completely work. Little understanding of appropriate uses of technology in the classroom.