Project Planning Guiding Questions
Eliane Metni, iEARN-Lebanon
We are putting forth some questions that we, as educators, should ask ourselves before engaging in a project. Let's keep them in mind in our activities during this workshop while planning our projects.
1) How will you introduce iEARN and the project to your students?
2) Often we think that because we would like to join a project that our students would like it as well. That is often not the case! What will you do? How will you get your students motivated?
3) How will you prepare them for online collaboration? Have your students worked on the Internet before? Do they know, or have you discussed with them Netiquette rules? Have them worked with students from a different culture before?
4) What resources will you need to work (books, reviews, magazines, websites, literature) Do you have access to Internet during your free hours? Can you use the schools library or a public library?
5) Are you able to invite professionals in the field to guide /lecture the students? Are you able to do so?
6) If yes, what activities will this visit generate?
7) Will you take your students on a field trip? Where? What is the procedure at school to organize a trip with your students, does your institution approve of it?
8) If yes, what activities will this field trip generate? How will you prepare your students to make the most of this trip? Are you going to ask them to take pictures and write a report? Who will read the report? Where will it be published?
9) What is the time frame of the project (Long term/short term)? Are you being realistic?
10) How many hours will you need to complete the project with your students?
11) How many classroom hours/week will you dedicate for this project?
12) If you need more hours to complete your project can you/are you able/willing to stay after schools to support your students?
13) Is there a club at school that can help/support your project?
14) Classroom Management/Procedures: What would be the best way of guiding your students when working on this project? Should you incorporate it as individual student work, cooperative learning groups or whole class group work? Should you use all methods at different times?
a) Classroom management for short-term participation
b) Classroom management for long-term participation
15) Classroom Techniques: What teaching methods should you use during your lessons for this project? (Brainstorming, The Writing Process, Dialogues, Group presentations, Role-playing, Narration, Problem-solving, Simulation, Discussions, etc.) Decide which methods are most appropriate for this project.
16) How are you going to manage posting and responding to the forum site? Will you need another computer teacher to help with this? Should you collaborate with anyone else? This is often time consuming, with slow connections, are you going to do this during your class hours/after class hours/in collaboration with the technology teacher?
17) What technical skills will you need to engage your students this project? (Searching the www, sending e-mails, using graphs, making presentations, inserting images into documents, using a digital camera)
18) What are the possible outcomes of this project? (Articles, pamphlets, artwork, newsletters, posters, campaigns, media, letters, presentations, CD-ROM, websites).
19) Will this outcome incur any additional costs to the school?
20) What are the difficulties and problems that you might be facing when working with your students?
21) Evaluation of participation of the project: How will you grade participation? Do you want your students' parents to be involved? How should you assess student participation?