Musings of a Technology Integration Project

In my past articles I’ve talked about the amount of time a project can take due to the fact the students are always trying to improve on it. This is a great skill to learn, but another skill would be deadlines. The length of time students can take on a project, if allowed, can be very frustrating. After working with these types of projects for several years I’ve come to the realization that I, as the teacher, need to help the students micromanage their time better. As an example, when doing a PowerPoint project I would have them get the written work put on the slides first, before they could go on to the fun stuff. This worked well except they then spent too long getting the rest of it finished. Even when they had a deadline, they couldn’t get the project completed due to their poor time management skills. As I look back I believe I needed to set better deadlines and hold them accountable. What do I mean by this? Again, using the PowerPoint project as my example, I needed to break the project up into smaller sections and set a deadline and consequence for each section when not reached. Ideas for breaking it up would be text, background (pictures or colors), pictures within the slide to go with the text, transitions (slide to slide or within the slide), and finally the speech to go with the presentation. Each of these sections would have a deadline as to when it must be completed and I would grade them as to where they were on each section. This would be a completed/ not completed grade that is part of the overall rubric. This could be done with any technology integration project. Just think about the different sections within the project and divide them up. If you are off in your timing, add a day. In other words, when you check everyone on the due date and find they’ve all been focused, yet it’s not completed, tell them that you miscalculated and they have only one more day on that section. This way it forces them to make some final decisions and still get that section completed. If students have done this type of project before, ask them how they think the project should be divided up and scheduled. You may overrule some of their suggestions, but it gives them some input into time management. Project oriented teaching can be very rewarding and many skills can be learned simultaneously. But by helping with the time management and student accountability, you will take most of the frustration out of any project you do. So think about this, plan for next year, and enjoy the summer.