Resource based Project

Resource-Based Project

The production of self-made multimedia projects can be approached into different ways:

   1. Instructive tools- such as in the production by students of a power point presentation of a selective topic.

   2. Constructive tools- such as when students do a multi-media presentation (with text, graphs, photos, audio narration, interviews, video clips, etc. to simulate a television news show.

The teacher steps out of the traditional role of being an context expert and information provider, and instead lets the students find their own facts and information.

The general flows of events in resource-based projects are:

   1. The teacher determines the topic for the examination of class.

   2. The teacher presents the problem to the class.

   3. The students find information on the problem/questions.

   4. Students organize their information in response to the problem/questions.

TRADITIONAL AND RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING

Traditional learning model

           

Resource-based learning model

Teacher is expert and information provides

           

Teacher is a guide and facilitator

Textbook is key source of information

           

Sources are varied(print, video. Internet, etc.)

Focus on facts

Information is packaged

In neat parcels

           

Focus on learning inquiry, quest, or discovery

The product is the be-all and end-all of learning

           

Emphasis on process

Assessment is quantitative

           

Assessment is quantitative and qualitative.

In a resource-based learning school, students become more self-sufficient. They ask productive questions; they synthesize, analyze, interpret and evaluate information. Libraries and databases all over the world can be accessed almost instantly giving students access to an enormous amount of information from a variety of sources.

The nature of resources has changed as a result of technological developments and the ability to catalog and classify digital media. Considerable opportunities are now available to teachers and students. Metadata--data about data--provides information about documents that can be retrieved by searching for the author, creation date, or content (Hill & Hannafin, 2001). Technology allows teachers or students to use those parts of resources that will satisfy their curiosity or educational needs. The boundaries that once separated teachers and students from resources are virtually gone.

Implementing Resource-Based Learning

Constructionism, Learning by Design, and Project Based Learning can easily be used as models for implementing resource-based learning in the classroom. Resource-based learning begins with clearly identified instructional goals. The teacher and media specialist decide on acceptable student-generated products. They divide the teaching responsibilities and gather varied resources. A timeline is created and the media center, computer lab, guest speakers and other resources are booked. Rubrics are designed and the students begin their quests. The teacher, often with input from the media specialist, evaluates the student produced artifacts. Finally, both the teacher and media specialist assess the success of the instruction itself, making adjustments for future implementations of the unit.

These are the steps in implementing a resource-based learning unit:

    * Identify the goal or goals.

    * Determine acceptable student produced artifacts including, but not limited to timelines, electronic slideshows, dramatic readings, videos, debates, postcards, reports, diaries, hierarchal web-based documents, or poster-board presentations.

    * Collaborate with the media specialist to plan the unit. Divide the responsibilities.

    * Select resources in a variety of formats which can include diaries, WebQuests, original documents, newspaper articles, magazine articles, games, poems, reference books, nonfiction books, experts, videos, museums, maps, charts, the Internet, works of art, plays, CD-ROMs, musical compositions, costumes, exhibits, PowerPoint presentations and field trips. This list is neither exhaustive nor static. But, rather, it is a dynamic list that will grow and change as new technologies emerge. The idea is to enlist a multitude of quality resources that will help students gather information, create knowledge and increase understanding and skill (Thompson & Henley, 2000).

Determine unit goals. Because resource-based learning takes a great deal of time, teachers and media specialists must be sure the goal reflects higher order thinking skills and problem solving abilities. In the scenario, Mr. Hartman and Ms. Russell met in the media center to clarify the learning goals and objectives for the Civil War resource-based learning unit. The goal, a deeper understanding of an aspect of the Civil War, was reflected in student produced PowerPoint presentations.

Determine acceptable student artifacts. The teacher should require a product that is challenging but realistic for the student. Ms. Russell wanted her students to integrate their newly acquired technology skills into the Civil War unit.

Thoroughly plan the unit. The teacher and media specialist outline the unit. To ensure complete planning, responsibilities and tasks for the teacher and media specialist should be determined. Generally, the media specialist is responsible for locating appropriate resources; the teacher provides guidance and feedback to students during the research process and is involved in student assessment. In our scenario, Mr. Hartman and Ms. Russell met to plan the unit and determine their individual tasks and responsibilities. Together, they brainstormed to select resources such as re-enactors, speakers, videos, databases, texts and Internet sites.

Gather resources in a variety of formats. Mr. Hartman was familiar with the many resources available in the media center. He gathered biographies of famous people of the Civil War. These biographies ranged from low to high reading levels. He included books containing primary documents and books about Civil War issues. He found Internet sites and produced his own WebQuest on the causes of the war. He reserved videos from the county instructional resource department and contacted the librarian at the public library for additional resources.

Generate a timeline for the unit. Mr. Hartman and Ms. Russell mapped out the timeline for the four-week unit. They set realistic dates, making allowances for technical difficulties.

Schedule research time. The unit designers must be sure the media center, computer lab and other resource sites are available. Guest speakers, field trips and other events must be arranged. A calendar noting each lesson within the unit is prepared.

Develop a rubric assess student artifacts. The teacher designs a rubric that clearly states the requirements for the end product. In the Civil War scenario, Ms. Russell determined that a rubric would be the best way to evaluate student performance. She designed it during the planning phase of the unit and distributed it on the first day. Students began their work knowing what was expected. With the rubric to guide them, they were able to choose a topic, research it, and finally create their products.

Evaluate student performance. Using the rubric, the teacher judges the student- generated product. In the Civil War scenario, Ms. Russell observed the PowerPoint presentations. In evaluating them, she used the rubric to ensure that the presentations had all the required elements.

Evaluate the unit. At the completion of the unit, the teacher and media specialist meet to assess the success of the unit. They make recommendations and changes for future use. Mr. Hartman and Ms. Russell listed the strengths and weaknesses of the unit and reflected upon how they could modify and enhance the unit for future implementations.

Guided Hypermedia Project

How Can Hypermedia Be Used in Schools?

Hypermedia can be defined as a non-sequential format that uses hypertext and multimedia elements to present information to users. There are many potential and realized advantages to using hypermedia in educational settings. The advantages of hypermedia depend on the mode of use. Allowing students to author their own hypermedia results in a different set of advantages than simply allowing students to be the audience of hypermedia presentations. The use of hypermedia must be carefully guided by teachers and other educational professionals to ensure that students are learning and focusing on valuable curricular concepts. Hypermedia can be a great tool to help facilitate differentiation of instruction in the classroom, but there are some pitfalls as well.

The production of self-made multimedia projects can be approached into different ways:

   1. Instructive tools- such as in the production by students of a power point presentation of a selective topic.

   2. Constructive tools- such as when students do a multi-media presentation (with text, graphs, photos, audio narration, interviews, video clips, etc. to simulate a television news show.

The media specialists play a crucial role in resource-based learning, beginning with the selection and acquisition of curriculum-supported materials. Aside from building the foundation of instructional materials, they must find the most appropriate information, map, music, or video from the plethora of resources that are available. Media specialists must teach students how to navigate websites. The History Resource Center, for example, an enormous and comprehensive database, can be used to research the Civil War. It contains periodicals, reference materials, primary sources, maps and images. However, Mr. Hartman must teach students how to efficiently use the various components of the site in order to maximize its potential.

Media specialists must be technologically up-to-date in order to offer the latest resources to staff and students. For example, it might be useful to add free e-books to the library home page and then teach the students how to download them from home. The scope of information literacy changes rapidly and the media specialist is instrumental in keeping the students and staff current on rapid changes in technology.

Role of the Teacher in Resource-Based Learning

Figure 2. A illustration of a teacher.

Teachers act as coaches, facilitators or guides as their learners are sampling and manipulating information in multiple formats. The teaching of facts is replaced by teaching students how to learn. The goal is to teach students to find, evaluate and use information to tackle the challenges they encounter along the way (Association of College and Research Libraries [ACRL] & American Library Association [ALA], 1989). Asking the right questions and finding the right resource to answer that question is a technique that teachers can model for their students.

In the Civil War resource-based learning example, Mr. Hartman and Ms. Russell provided a rich resource base from which students could choose. A student interested in visual arts might have chosen to design a timeline of the major Civil War battles; those interested in personal reaction might have selected primary resources such as the journals of soldiers, statesmen, or private citizens.

When teachers thoughtfully design resource-based units, as did Ms. Russell and Mr. Hartman, students are forced to analyze and evaluate the information they encounter. Teachers must ask the right questions and offer enough help so that students progress in their learning. Learners are further motivated when their final products, such as the Civil War PowerPoint presentations or reflections in the example, are displayed or published.

Insightful teachers have recast the role of the instructor from providers of information to facilitators who ensure that learning occurs (Beswick, 1977). Ultimately, the goal of education is to produce fully capable members of the wider, interrelated learning community (American Association of School Librarians [AASL] & Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT], 1998). Media specialists and teachers now facilitate learning rather than dispense content through worksheets and textbooks.

Benefits of Resource-Based Learning

Good lesson plans engage students. Resource-based learning is more engaging and therefore more motivating--thus, it helps make students better learners. According to Turner and Paris (1995), there are six strategies for motivation: choice, challenge, control, collaboration, constructing meaning, and consequences. (See the Six C's of motivation). The resource-based learning unit in the above scenario employs all six of these strategies.

Resource-based learning provides the training ground for development of the necessary information literacy skills for learners to navigate the changing, sometimes confusing, landscape of information sources. When information literacy skills lessons are seamlessly interwoven into content lessons, resource-based learning enables students to independently meet their information needs during an activity and, more importantly, in their future learning; it promotes the goal of lifelong learning.

By using a variety of resources, students learn to efficiently use almanacs, encyclopedias, atlases, databases, technology tools and other resources. This awareness is at the very core of information literacy.

Student motivation is heightened during resource-based learning because final products are readily displayed or presented, providing consequences for a task successfully completed.

Students feel empowered by the freedom to explore various resources and often perceive that they have uncovered knowledge unknown even to their teachers. In the Civil War lesson, Ms. Russell might create a class Civil War web page; the students will realize that millions of people can learn from the results of their efforts. This is highly motivating to the learners.

Resource-based learning can significantly change teacher practices, challenging them to reinvent old instructional practices and routines in ways that reflect the changing world in which our students learn.

Computer software allows students to investigate and experiment in ways that would have been impractical or impossible before the advent of this resource. In this virtual environment, students can mix volatile chemicals, melt pounds of gold, or split atoms without the obstacles of cost and efficiency (Girod, 2000). This has changed the thinking skills of today's students, as many lessons are open-ended and allow unlimited avenues for inquiry.

According to McKenzie (2000), these are the three stages in problem-solving activities: "Prospecting --> Interpreting --> Creating good new ideas." Information-literate students are proficient locators, capable evaluators, and responsible, creative users of information (AASL & AECT, 1998). Clearly, resource-based learning necessitates development of information literacy skills. Students engaged in resource-based learning activities must analyze, synthesize and evaluate information; these cognitive competencies are on the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Resource-based learning promotes problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills. Students no longer passively receive information; instead, they actively interact with it through engaging, relevant resources.

For instance in Civil War research, students might access school databases such as the History Resource Center, or use the World Wide Web to examine fashions of the day at http://www.costumes.org. Government documents, journals and videotapes can be used to gather even more information that can be pieced together to construct meaning and answer divergent questions.

When students know how to locate and use valuable, valid and reliable information, this enables them to meet any challenge that arises. By becoming familiar with different types of resources, students are better able to make choices when faced with important decisions. Through resource-based learning, students become aware of the wealth of information that is available to them.

An integral aspect of resource-based learning is its flexibility. Students may work alone, or cooperatively. They select resources which fit best with their learning styles. Resource-based learning can be used effectively as a component of project- or problem-based learning, or as a complement to other inquiry learning models. The benefits of resource-based learning also include maximizing the use of instructional resources and teaching time, as well as effective incorporation of technology into the curriculum (Doiron & Davies, 1998).

What is Hypermedia?

Hypermedia combines the concepts of hypertext and multimedia to allow rich interaction between the user and the material. Hypertext itself is basically the same as regular text except that it contains connections within the text to other documents (Hughes, 1994). The term multimedia has been around for a long time, long before the advent of personal computers. Today it is usually used to describe the integration of text, graphics, animation, sound, video and music in an interactive software environment (Turner and Handler, 1997).

Students as Audience of Hypermedia

In the role of audience to hypermedia, students interact with hypermedia environments developed by others. Examples of this type of interaction would include reading articles in online encyclopedias, observing a PowerPoint presentation (with links and other multimedia elements) developed by a teacher, playing interactive adventure games, or looking at various interactive websites on the Internet. Lu (n.d.) would consider this as level 1, or read only hypermedia. As an audience to hypermedia, children often still manage to control how they navigate through the information, and one child is likely to navigate the material in a different order than another. Students will choose their paths based on their interests and objectives. While students are able to have some control in this role, they are still limited by the design decisions made by the software designer or their teacher (Turner and Handler, 1997).

Advantages of Hypermedia

Learning Styles Webpage

    Advantages of using hypermedia in instruction are numerous.

They include the fact that differentiation of instruction is often built into the application and allows the learner to adapt information to his own learning style. Students gain control of the order they access information as well as the number of times they engage a specific piece of information. Students will often have the option of simply reading the text (verbal learning style), or hearing the text read (aural learning style), or seeing a visual representation of the text reproduced (visual learning style), among other options. Teachers can use the above webpage to assess their own learning styles as well as those of their students.

Interactive Chemistry Website

    Hypermedia is not limited by physical space. The costs of paper and color photographs are no longer an issue. There is tremendous potential to save time and money in the long run. In science classrooms there is tremendous potential to save money on laboratory materials as well. The above link is just one example of using the Internet as an alternative to a chemistry lab.

Disadvantages of Hypermedia

Requires Extra Teacher Planning Time

Disadvantages of using hypermedia in an educational setting include the fact that it takes a tremendous amount of time to initially develop hypermedia lessons. Teachers must get the appropriate training in using software and other hypermedia components, and be given adequate time to plan and incorporate hypermedia lessons into their curriculum. One method to help ameliorate the lack of planning time that plagues so many public school teachers is for those teachers to allow their students to author hypermedia products in conjunction with the curriculum. Then those teachers can use these hypermedia products with other students in that same class, as well as with future students in other classes. Teachers would still need proper training to successfully guide their students through these initial creations.

Student Focus Issues

Another potential disadvantage in using hypermedia involves students who already have trouble focusing on specific tasks. Those students who have trouble focusing on assignments in general may be overwhelmed by hypermedia lessons. They may lose focus entirely or they may learn a little bit about a lot about different things, but they might miss the central purpose of an assignment. Teachers would have to take extra time to re-focus students' attention on what is truly important in the context of the curriculum-based lesson. Therefore, the use of hypermedia must be carefully guided by teachers and other educational professionals to ensure that students are learning and focusing on valuable curricular concepts.

Web based Project

Students can be made to create and post web pages on a given topic. But creating new pages, even single page web pages, maybe tool sophisticated and time consuming fort the average student.

            It should be said, however, that posting of web pages in the Internet allows the students (now the web page creator) a wider audience. They can also be linked with other related sites in the Internet. But as of now, this creativity project maybe to ambitious as a tool in the teaching-learning process.

You use the following top 10 software for personal or business use. Keep track of all your projects in one place and finish them successfully on time.

#1: Codendi

Codendi is an open-source collaborative development platform offered by Xerox. From only one interface, it gathers, all the needed tools for software development teams: management and versioning of code, bugs, requirements, documents, reporting, tests etc. It is mainly used for managing software project processes.

#2: Redmine

Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database. It includes calendar and gantt charts to aid visual representation of projects and their deadlines.

#3: ProjectPier

ProjectPier is a Free, Open-Source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive web interface. ProjectPier will help your organization communicate, collaborate and get things done Its function is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom and scalability of self-hosting.

#4: Trac

Trac is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. Trac allows hyperlinking information between a computer bug database, revision control and wiki content. It also serves as a web interface to a version control system like Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs.

#5: Project HQ

Project HQ is a collaborative open source project management tool, similar to Basecamp and activeCollab. Project HQ is built on open source technologies like Python, Pylons and SQLAlchemy and is fully database independent. Project HQ uses a structured workflow to assist you in managing your projects.

#6: Collabtive

Collabtive is a web-based project management software that is being published as Open Source software. The project was started in November 2007. It strives to provide an Open Source alternative to proprietary tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab.

#7: eGroupWare

eGroupWare is a free open source groupware software intended for businesses from small to enterprises. Its primary functions allow users to manage contacts, appointments, projects and to-do lists.

It is used either via its native web-interface, making access platform-independent, or by using different supported groupware clients, such as Kontact, Novell Evolution, or Microsoft Outlook. It can also be used by mobile phone or PDA via SyncML.

#8: KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

#9: OpenGoo

It is a complete online solution focused on improving productivity, collaboration, communication and management of your teams. OpenGoo main features include document management, contact management, e-mail, project management, and time management. Text documents and presentations can be created and edited online. Files can be uploaded, organized and shared, independent of file formats.

#10: ClockingIT

ClockingIT is a free Project Management solution, which helps your team stay focused and on top of things.

SIMPLE CREATIONS

In developing software, creativity as an outcome should not be equated with ingenuity or high intelligence. Creating is more consonant with planning, making, assembling, designing or building.

Three kinds of skills/abilities:

·        Analyzing- distinguishing similarities and differences/ seeing the project as a problem to be solved.

·        Synthesizing- making spontaneous connections among ideas, does generating interesting or new ideas.

·        Promoting- selling of a new ideas to allow the public to test the ideas themselves.

The five key task to develop creativity:

   1. Define the task- clarify the goal of the completed project to the student.

   2. Brainstorm- the students themselves will be allowed to generate their own ideas on the project. Rather than shoot down ideas, the teacher encourages ideas exchange.

   3. Judge the ideas- the students themselves make an appraisal for or against any idea. Only when students are completely off check should the teacher intervene.

   4. Act- the students do their work with the teacher a facilitator.

   5. Adopt flexibility- the students should be allowed to shift gears and not follow an action path rigidly.