Overall Impressions:
As the start of school approached, I was excited to become part of
the MITTEN Project. I believed it would be an opportunity to take
a completely different path to the integration of technology into my lessons.
I had assumed that what I was doing prior to MITTEN was inadequate.
As I read the materials and attended the first NLC meetings, I found that
what I was doing was not too far "off base". Several of the lessons
which Joe and I prepared and taught, were based on activities I have done
I the past. We simply modified these plans to take advantage of what
we were learning from the course. Overall, I am satisfied with the
integration of technology into our lessons. I will however continue
to make adjustments with these lessons before using them next year.
I believe we learned from some of our mistakes and applied those lessons
to our later projects.
Individual Lessons:
Inventions Tournament--- Joe created this lesson based
on the basic concept of a Churchill colleague. He added the internet
research and modified the report sheet. This was one of the more
interesting lessons, as we were often surprised by the "upsets" students
picked as the most important inventions. We had few problems in the
lab outside of the dozen or so students who forgot their passwords.
A More Perfect Union--- I was thrilled to begin this unit
on elections. The results were often frustrating however. Installing
the program onto our computers became an ordeal. We had problems
with data being wiped out, causing students to lose their simulations and
being forced to start over after 2 or 3 days of work. We also had
problems with students modifying settings which interfered with the audio/video
portions of the sim. I have leaned how to trouble shoot many of these
conflicts and am confident we will solve the problems for next semester.
Immigration Scrapbooks--- The lesson I took from this project
is to not assume that students are proficient with the use of internet
search tools, despite having completed basic internet training. We
had to take time out refresh their knowledge.
Progressive Newspapers--- Two major problems arose during
this project. The first was a problem with cross compatibility between
the iMacs and Dells. We were attempting to use MS Word templates,
some of which would not open on both of the platforms. Using both
platforms became necessary for one of the classes because neither lab was
available for the 4 days of the project. The second issue arose from
plagiarism. Several students simply "cut and pasted" the work of
others. After the project we reviewed the meaning of plagiarism and
emphasized the importance of citing work in our last project. A positive
outcome from this project came from reflections written by students.
Several responded by writing of the positive peer pressure and assistance
given by group mates in order to finish the project.
WWI Letters--- It is this lesson that I am most proud of.
It is a completely new concept for me. I used internet research to
find online lessons at the National Archives site, and then modified them
o fit our needs. For the first time I created an interactive handout,
which the students can access from my LAN folder. I believe I have
applied my experiences from the MITTEN Project to make this lesson a valuable
one for my students.
Final Thoughts:
Despite numerous hardware/software problems, I feel more committed
to integrating technology into my classroom. I am excited about the
ways to transform my teaching into a more student-centered approach.
The experience I have gained is already helping me plan for next semester.
I would like to thank all staff at UM-D for their efforts to bring their
knowledge to K-12 teachers and would especially like to thank Joe Motowski
for the hard work and dedication he has shown to our students.
