Can technology, when well applied, help solve this problem? It can, and we'll show you how. This course will teach you how to develop learning experiences that involve students learning together with the help of the web.

Objectives

Upon completing this course, you'll be able to:

1. Work on a team as you design a complete inquiry-based unit (WebQuest) that will engage students over a period of two or more weeks.
2. Design and develop an activity which will guide your students in exploring and using information on the Internet.
3. Create and use an online database of teaching strategies, lessons and resources for your future use as a professional.
4. Use technology assessment tools to gather and report on the performance of your students.
5. Design a telecollaborative activity involving students working with other learners at a distance.
6. Participate in informal online professional development as part of a virtual learning community.

Standards

This course is designed to meet the technology standards required for California Level II teaching credentials:

1. Each candidate uses a computer application to manipulate and analyze data (e.g. create, use, and report from a database; and create charts and reports from a spreadsheet).
2. Each candidate communicates through a variety of electronic media (e.g. presentations incorporating images and sound, web pages, and portfolios).
3. Each candidate interacts and collaborates with others using computer-based collaborative tools (e.g. threaded discussion groups, newsgroups, electronic list management applications, online chat, and audio/video conferences).
4. Each candidate demonstrates competence in evaluating the authenticity, reliability, bias of the data gathered; determines outcomes and evaluates the success or effectiveness of the process used.
5. Each candidate optimizes lessons based upon the technological resources available in the classroom, school library media centers, computer labs, district and county facilities, and other locations.
6. Each candidate designs, adapts, and uses lessons which address the students' needs to develop information literacy and problem solving skills as tools for lifelong learning.
7. Each candidate creates or makes use of learning environments inside the classroom, as well as in library media centers or computer labs, that promote effective use of technology aligned with the curriculum.
8. Each candidate uses technology in lessons to increase each student's ability to plan, locate, evaluate, select, and use information to solve problems and draw conclusions.
9. Each candidate uses technology as a tool for assessing student learning and for providing feedback to students and their parents.
10. Each candidate frequently monitors and reflects upon the results of using technology in instruction and adapts lessons accordingly.
11. Each candidate collaborates with other teachers, mentors, librarians, resource specialists, and other experts to support technology-enhanced curriculum. For example, they may collaborate on interdisciplinary lessons or cross grade level projects.
12. Each candidate contributes to site-based planning or local decision making regarding the use of technology and acquisition of technological resources.
13. The program meets other factors related to this standard of quality brought to the attention of the team by the program.

Readings

The required text for the course is called the Project Based Learning Handbook (PBLH) and is available for purchase directly from the Buck Institute of Education (http://www.bie.org/index.php/site/PBL/pbl_handbook/ ).

Grading

Your final grade will be determined by your performance on several projects:

TCL - Telecollaborative Lesson. Weight = 15%

The internet isn't just about linking computers to each other; it's also about linking people. Interacting with and learning from other children in some other place can be the basis for an authentic and powerfully motivating lesson. You will design such a lesson using the categories and ideas developed by Judi Harris. This assignment will be done in groups of 2 to 3.

DEL - Database Exploration Lesson. Weight = 15%

One powerful use of computers is to sift through large amounts of data to find the patterns hidden within them. Take a list of countries, for example, and look for relationships between the dominant religion and birthrate; between GNP and literacy; between government type and continent. In this assignment, you'll identify a standard that could be met by such exploration, create an online database, and describe how you would implement it with learners. This is an individual assignment.

OPD - Participation in Online Professional Development. Weight = 10%

Learning about technology and teaching is an ongoing activity that you'll continue long after this course is over. Fortunately, there are many free resources online that will help you along the way. In this assignment, you'll spend an hour participating in an interactive session on one of several online educational websites. Speak with your instructor for a professional development opportunity that is not exclusively in the K12 arena if you are interested.

PBL - Project-Based Learning. Weight = 50%

The final project is a unit that will involve students for at least five class periods. The unit will be documented in enough detail so that another teacher could pick it up and implement it without ever meeting you face to face. Your deliverable will contain the following parts:

• Web pages aimed at teachers that describe the objectives / curriculum standards addressed, assumptions about the learners and context, and implementation details.
  
  
• Web pages aimed at the learners, with all the information needed for them to progress through the lesson. These pages may be a mixture of web-based and print-based materials and include extra worksheets and guide pages to scaffold their learning.

Course participation. Weight = 10%

Timeliness

With so much to do, it's important that you not fall behind in completing the work of this course, especially in the summer when we only have thirteen weeks to work with.

This is a graduate level course. Please keep in mind the following definitions of grading standards from the SDSU Graduate Catalog:
 

A = Outstanding achievement; available only for the highest accomplishment
B = Praiseworthy performance; definitely above average
C = average; awarded for satisfactory performance...

The bottom line is this: A's are reserved for exemplary performance that goes beyond expectations.