Project Planning Sheet

Shelbi Burnett

Desktop Publishing Assignment

Goals:

The objectives of this lesson include becoming familiarized with a desktop publishing program to create a finished product that informs a group of peers about my teaching philosophy as well as the environment I promote in the classroom. This would be a critical tool for communication both with parents and school administrators to provide concise look at what is happening in my classroom and how it is structured. It has been identified that communication is vital to the success of education and this assignment would encourage open lines of communication as parents of the students in my classroom would become more aware of the environment in which their children are learning. As a biology teacher this flyer serves to emulate the creativity and wonder I promote in my classroom. The flyer itself attempts to promote the ideas that are essential to my particular teaching philosophy.

Content Standards:

This assignment follows and meets the National Educational Technology Standards as well as the Performance Indicators for teachers in particular:

1. 1. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
   1. Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional
   2. Community, by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources. Teachers:
   3. Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning
   4. Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community
   5. Building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others
   6. evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning
   7. Contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community

Description of Assignment:

By using a particular desktop publishing program, this document will incorporate text and images to attain an appropriate communication tool. It will be used to convey my ideas and philosophies about teaching as well as the classroom environment I promote to the education community at large (i.e. parents, students, administrators). It will be clearly organized as well as easy to read and comprehend.

Reflection

Desktop publishing assignments are unique in the fact that they can organize information graphically in a way that Word Processing cannot.  We have discussed the idea of scaffolding in the classroom and both of these activities can be used in important, but different areas of the scaffolding method.

Word processing programs such as Microsoft, encourage connecting ideas and critically analyzing knowledge, where as publishing assignments are best for organizing knowledge. By using the scaffolding method these two programs would be utilized in different stages of a project. Students can first use graphic design programs to arrange their thoughts for better understanding: lower order thinking skill. Subsequently a teacher can assign a word processing task that requires students to evaluate what they know and draw conclusions from that involving higher order thinking skills. Finally an instructor can ask the students to again create a document that is a synthesis of the conclusions they have drawn during this assignment which finalizes the learning process.  All in all, desktop publishing activities enhance the learning process by enriching it as well as giving students another venue for thinking and creating involving the material they are learning.

In a Biology classroom this idea is easy to implement and there are a variety of methods that an instructor could employ. I would choose to have my students graphically organize their ideas in a web of sorts, connecting various concepts that we have incorporated into a particular lesson. After they have completed this, I would have them complete a writing assignment verbally connecting these ideas and analyzing the relationships they have diagramed in their publishing product. Once this is finished the students would then be expected to create a visual product to model this to the class, something that again re-enforces what they have learned as well as “drives home” the lesson by having to relay it orally to a group of their peers.

Projects like this are quite involved and require dedication from not only the student but also patience on the part of the teacher. But their relevance to the classroom and the learning environment cannot be ignored. The sheer number of times the student covers the material and familiarizes themselves with it during this process drastically alters the learning process allowing for a deeper encoding of the material.

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