#pedproject

[mahnpreet-blog]

That’s a wrap...

School can sometimes be really boring especially when many teachers decide to read straight from the textbook. Can this be changed for the better? Can Personal Electronic Devices be used for the greater good? Well in my group’s PED Project we decided to test this and see if implementing PEDs could increase student engagement and achievement.  At the beginning, we needed a starting point so we surveyed the class we working with. Afterwards, we implemented Poll Everywhere which is the PED tool that we implemented. At the end, we surveyed the class again to see if there was an improvement. Sadly there was no way to tell due to the fact that we only did this once.

This project took a lot of mini tasks to finish. I would say that I did help out a great deal of this project. The things that I did was that I wrote a proposal which was used to see if any teachers wanted to work with us, as well as put all over planning on a spreadsheet (this included over deliverables as well as our Gantt Chart.) In addition to this, I also helped with the creation and presentation of the questions for our Poll Everywhere demonstration. Furthermore, I helped with some of the surveys we made to track the classes progress and how the students and teachers felt with this new technology being brought into their classroom. Lastly, I helped out with our Executive Summary.

I think that this project was not a complete success. I can say yes we did complete something but it was not the goal that we originally planned. Our main goal was to see if there was a correlation between student engagement and achievement, we did not really see this until the end. I think that this was because we didn't have the time. This project relies on the cooperation with other teachers. I think if we could test this multiple times with multiple classrooms I think this would be a success. But with the resources we had, I believe that what we accomplished was still great. Not only did we teach the teacher we were working with Poll Everywhere, we also introduced Google Classroom. I think this project can be a partial success because we did not meet our goal yet we accomplished something.

If I could go back and change something from this project I would probably change the fact that we only did one trial with the class. To really see if there is a change in student engagement and achievement when PEDs are implemented takes time. Since we only went in once we didn't see the full effects. Yes, we saw that more kids were paying attention, but I feel in this project there should be an impact. We do not know if after this project the teacher we worked with continued with it or just stopped. We do not know if it really worked. I feel like if there was a chance where we could have gone in a couple more times I think then we would have seen if there was a possibility of increasing student achievement and engagement.

Some suggestions that I would give to improve this project would be to see if there was a way to get more teachers involved. Even though yes this would be a hard thing to implement I feel like having more teachers involved with PEDs is important. Even though I have been in the class of the teacher we worked with and saw his teaching as something that was already engaging he still found things to take away. I think that a lot of teachers should open up to the idea of having PEDs, due to the way the world is going. Students go to each of their classes and expect the same thing, either reading from the textbook or off the board. No matter how interesting the topic may be everyone finds this boring. Having Poll Everywhere or a Kahoot really makes a difference. People look forward to classes. I think that teachers need to stop being afraid of a new technology's afraid of breaking things and have fun with it.

[mahnpreet-blog]

PED Project Reaction :) The project that I am doing about Personal Electronic Devices is a to see if see if there is a correlation between the use personal electronic devices in classroom activities and  student achievement/engagement. Overall this project has been enjoying and I have been learning quite a lot. I have learned about new platforms such as Trello and RealTime Board, which are really helpful in organising and keeping track of the tasks for a large project. Furthermore, this project is so different from the usual projects that people get from other classes. Every single day when I walk through the door I know there is something to be accomplished making me able to get focused quickly, while in a classroom there is the routine of just sitting and listening to the teacher. Since we have only accomplished the planning stage for our project it has also given me the opportunity to flex my organisational skills. I am a meticulous person and so far this project has been so far good but I wouldn't say it is all was perfect. Since I have the need for things to be presentable it can cause me the little negative in this project. Since there is a lot to do I find that time is running out quick.  With this is in mind even though it is not practical to make the project "pretty, I fill like there should be a bit of extra time to do so. In my mindset, I feel like it is important to stay organised from the beginning so there is less work the more you move through the project. But looking at this project from afar I believe that there are more positives than negative meaning that this is a project that I do enjoy. In this project, I do not believe that I do not have any sort of role. The group that I am working with are people who all just pick up something and go. In our group, there is no leader and there are no followers. Everyone puts their input and we find the best possible comprise which will work effectively to give us the best results. So far we have been going with a plan as you go. I believe that deciding a lot ahead can cause complications. We are taking this project deliverable by deliverable so when the time comes we can then split the workload. So far in this project My concerns going forward with this project is that the Gnatt Chart that my group created will not go as planned. Since our project is dependant on the teachers time and cooperation it can cause some complications. Furthermore, this can create some problem with the project being delayed. But I see that there is one good that can come from this complication and that can be for us to finish some of the concurrent tasks. Since there are not as many concurrent tasks as sequential this creates the time gap a complication because there can be times where we are scheduling with teachers creating a time period that for the project will not be used effectively. I expect that the outcome of this project will be a positive result for my group is amazing. It is filled with productivity and a little bit of being side tracked but overall this creates the ideal setting for the project to be accomplished. The result that I hope that we receive is where my group goes into the class it is assigned and creates an improvement. This would the outcome that I hope for. Most people find school to be boring for the do not prefer learning with a teacher talking and using a powerpoint for notes. Personally, as a student, I wish a lot of my teachers created an environment where I was not sitting at a desk for 90%  of the time. So with this in mind, the outcome that I hope to create is to show the teacher a way to use Personal Electronic devices