Wrapping Up

There has been some exciting occurs in this last week of working on the project. Some of the highlights include creating great graphs, some students not working, some students doing all the work, some teams working well together and the cafeteria already making changes.  

On last Thursday, many of the teams kept getting off task. I think it was a mixture of summer fever and some confusion on how to create graphs. Although I taught how to do graphs in class, I do not have all of the students on the teams. This resulted in some teams not having anyone who knew what to do. I thought a handout that showed step by step would work but that was not good. Also, I was the only teacher in the team that knew excel. Despite these kinks, there were some groups who made some headway and got their five graphs created.

The cafeteria manager started to be very interested in what suggestions from the students. I supplied her with the graphs of all the responses of all the school. Students started reporting this week changes in the cafeteria menu for the better. This was GREAT news. The students actually got to see that what they do can make a difference. They do have a voice that the world needs to hear. 

The Tuesday project meeting was the best. I wrote suggestions on all the teams that had graphs so they can make changes. Students really got into the updates to graphs. To teams in particular do a great job changing the layout. I will post those images on Friday. The best thing about it all is that no one taught them how to change it. I helped the figure out the right way to click and they took it and ran. This was the highlight of the entire project to me. Getting students to understand and use technology for themselves and by themselves.

Today, we talked as a team about what we need to do as a wrap up. I will be producing a document for the students to see their grades on all the turned in assignments at this point. We will also make sure the students know not to just copy and paste the example business proposal. I will also print all the items from the different teams to place in a binder. 

We started to also discuss what went well and what we need to work on. The great thing about it all is we have a record through wikispaces to build upon. DeAnn mentioned how all the team has to be trained on the technology the students use before we have the students use it. I am going to create a form for all of us to fill out to come up with more items we need to do as an improvement and what went well. Overall, the teachers admitted this was a little difficult since they never seen a project before so they spectated on occasion. I saw this as  need for me to be able to create a better picture for others. Despite this issue, they are all loving the idea of project based learning and anxious to do it again!