WPP Final

The issue was was in need of a solution was that a course needed to have an online platform on which students could work in teams and publish their research project.
The bigger issue was that these groups would swap every four weeks and their projects needed to be archived and the site needed to be made available for the next rotation.
This site needed to provide students a way to collaborate online as well as practice other 21st century skills.

The solution to this issue came in the form of Google Apps for Education, primarily the Google Sites feature. Google sites allowed me to manage a site on which students could work together and provide a creative way to publish their research findings. Google sites enabled both the students and teachers to engage in an online environment that could be available at any time, from any computer, home or school.

From a TPACK stanpoint, the technology made itself readily available to the teachers' pedagogy, as they were able to practice modeling and scaffold their content, and measured the students' understanding by the quality of work they published on their site as a team. It also lent itself to help teachers encourage collaboration with a dynamic group of students that would swap every four weeks.
The content and technology played very well together as students were able to use the web to research their topics. This made it very easy for the students to go by the questionnaire they were given and research from home or in the classroom. Since the topics covered varied, students had the freedom to use multiple media outlets, online and offline to compile what they found to be the best overview of their topic.
Teachers were able to put into play their pedagogy with the content as they asked questions while the students were working, such as "how is what you're doing right now possible for someone that would have the disability you are researching?" These questions re-enforced the content the students had been exposed to, and were able to create a relationship with the research.


Here is my presentation, it is an overview of the issue, the solution, what it took to put it into practice, and some of the things I learned along the way.

Thank you.