Podcast script #2

K here is my script. It is a little over 2 min but I think that will be fine.

As you can imagine, this is going to be a pretty labor intensive and time consuming project for your students. They will be spending at least a little time every day working on bits and pieces of the project, either alone, or with partners. The learning outcomes will be different for every student, which is what we are aiming for. As the project is partially run by the students themselves, each parent should be seeing different things coming home with their students, we do not want final projects to mirror one another. Having students differ in what they learn allows them to educate their fellow classmates.

As teachers, having so much of the project on the internet allows us to do so much more one-on-one time with the students. We are able to give feedback to students right away simply by viewing their online blogs or websites. Students can also critique one another. You can also view student progress with access codes that we will give to only those allowed to interact with our new scientists.

I know that technology can be a daunting thing for some parents. We don't want you to be afraid of it! We want your children to be able to learn how to use it - in ways that will be beneficial to their future. We are not suing technology just for technology's sake. The fact of the matter is, we live in a world where the skills that they will be using in this project are ones that they need to land those perfect jobs much farther on down the road. Students will be gaining 21^st century skills including communication, and managing their own time. One example of a technology skill that your students will be using is live video feed. Every student will have a penpal from another area of our country and will be keeping in contact with them through virtual penpals, blogs, and live video feed. These interactions are, of course, monitored. But please see us with any questions or concerns you might have.

One of the topics in this project, “Things We've Created” allows your students to question something that originated here in our area and look into it further. Students can choose from any thing that interests them. They might be able to get a lot of information from the internet or other sources that we are able to give them here in the classroom but there may be times when they ask you to take them down to the guitar shop downtown, which is just one of the great things about this project - you will see the excitement in learning for yourself!