Thing 16: Student 2.0 Tools

The Research Project Calendar is a very cool tool that could make both students' and teachers' lives a little easier. This tool helps students break projects into smaller pieces and gives deadlines for each piece to keep students on track. While I believe that most teachers do this already, the calculator will help them to know that their deadlines are realistic and achievable. The calculator can also be used as a teaching tool to help students learn the skill of breaking a problem down into smaller pieces. The steps of the process when broken down seem to compliment the "Big 6" process that our district embraces, too. As a middle school teacher, I intend to share this tool with my team. I think it would be really powerful for our students if we can all "speak the same language" when assigning larger research projects. It might even help us to make our students' lives more manageable by allowing us to lay out all of our projects and make sure the timing of our collective deadlines is manageable and age-appropriate. I can see this as a tool that my entire team can embrace and utilize without much effort. I also appreciate the teacher tools embedded in the tool.