I gained valuable tips and tricks for PBL and creating projects. The feedback was extremely helpful. I cannot wait to start working with my assigned online coach!

The critical friends reveiw I am conducting is for Angela Briscoe. Her project is geared towards an elementary/middle school audience. Her project is very detailed and well-thought out. I specifically liked her deatailed and straight to-the-point rubric for evaluation. I believe her project hits home on the core focus of project-based learning. Students will be fully engaged in the application and synthesis of this project. All of the relevant and necessary standards are covered as they relate to the social studies curriculum. Overall, this project is laid out well and the driving question is not only content specific, but relevant to the level of her students in her classroom.

The critical friend I reviewed was Jason Canfield. His project had a similar goal as mine, employment. Having feedback helps you clarify your project and identifies strong and weak points beforehand.

Name of Project: Forever World
Social Studies, Language & Computer Skills / 6th Grade
Driving Question: If everyone lived forever, what would we do about people who are unemployed? Should the working people take care of the unemployed forever?
Description: Groups of 3-4 students will create a power point presentation presenting a program for government assistance for immortal people who after living on the earth for a time, never found, kept or lost their job. The sections of the power point presentation will cover two of the following areas: Food, Shelter/Housing, Utilities, & Transportation. All groups must create an Education / Job Training program to get people back to work and decide what will happen to people who don’t get jobs and contribute to the society.

•How was being part of a Critical Friends helpful to your thinking?
The critical friend I worked with was camorton. We worked throughout the 2 days, worked via email and even met for dinner one evening at a wi-fi hotspot. It was really helpful to have the input of another middle school media specialist on the project. We both are in the position of having to work collaboratively with classroom teachers which is a different persepctive when writing lesson plans of any kind. She helped me work with my calendar and gave me good input regarding the title to the project. We discussed classroom standards and decided which would be most appropriate to work with in regards to the Michigan technology standards.

•How was being part of a Critical Friends helpful to your thinking?
•What are your thoughts about the benefits of students collaborating, based on this Critical Friends experience?
I had a face to face Critical Friends meeting with Mary. It was helpful to my thinking because Mary was able to look at my project from a different perspective. She gave me some advice about which content standards should be taken out and which could be added. She also came up with the idea about using Skype to communicate with Global Mamas.
One of the benefits of collaboration is hearing a fresh voice after you're done thinking about a project. A critical friend can think of things you've forgotten. Parts of the project you may have overdone or underdone can be examined and touched up.

How was Critical Friends helpful? It was a guide to respond to the modules. It helped me to see what others were thinking. I did get a few project ideas as well. Obviously, we wouldn't be doing all of this if we didn't think the benefits to our students would be anything less than great. Bouncing around ideas, receiving feedback, seeing what others have done to spark though and ideas are just a few ways students benefit from collaborating.

The collaborative environment was helpful in understanding the modules and therefore the process of getting a PBL plan for a classroom off the ground. I worked with a partner from this community and we were able to discuss the questions and issues as we were reading and reflecting. This was tremendously helpful. I also appreciated having access to others' responses and project ideas.
I think that students will benefit from cooperative group structures in which they can discuss and process with the help of others. The interactions that make collaborative groups successful must be taught as part of the project process, but once they are in place the opportunities for learning and integrating new ideas into ones own thinking are so much greater.

I was able to work with Mark Raffler since we are in the same office building. It was really helpful to discuss ideas for rubrics, make sure things are staying targeted towards standards, ask clarfiying questions about the overview document. Also, He helped me focus on which of my assessments are really formative as opposed to summative. This has been fun to work together on. I have also enjoyed seeing the ideas that others have been posting out there.

How was being part of a Critical Friends helpful to your thinking?
What are your thoughts about the benefits of students collaborating, based on this Critical Friends experience?

To be honest, I recently received feedback from my coach. His comments input and additional resources were incredibly helpful. I feel that any input will only enhance the quality of the unit. I love the idea of students collaborating based on the critical friends. In fact, it would be nice to come together as a group to collaborate once the PBL units were nearly completed.