Post-Reflection

As I look back over my experiences with this collaborative process, I am reminded of the mixed feelings I had throughout the project. My first feelings were definitely of apprehension and confusion. The task at hand seemed too large to manage, and I felt unsure of the general requirements. As the collaboration progressed, I felt lucky to have a partner who was easy to work with and responsive. We shared our concerns and worked together to find the answers we needed. After our initial ideas were finalized and we started working, I became more interested in financial literacy than I ever thought possible. I brought home armloads of books from the library and spent days weeding through online resources. Now that the project is complete, I feel proud of our work and look forward to collaborating with teachers in the future.

From this collaboration, I learned about the overwhelming number of resources available for collaboration and financial literacy for all ages. These resources helped make the task at hand seem less daunting; there were ideas and tools already developed that we could build upon and customize for the needs of our students. I also learned about effective communication methods when in-person meetings were not possible. This knowledge will help in the future when teachers are too busy to spend a lot of time meeting with me. We could have a preliminary meeting and use online tools, such as email and a wiki, to communicate ideas when we are not together. I also learned about the value of setting mini-goals and mini-deadlines. By breaking the large project into smaller segments, the work became more manageable. Having a clear idea of who was doing what and when helped to keep the project progressing and on track. All of these skills and experiences will be beneficial to me as a school media specialist.

Now that I have had this collaborative experience, I am interested in learning even more about successful collaborations. I would like to learn more about how a teacher and media specialist collaboration would work in a real school situation. I wonder about the time restrictions and the level of involvement of both parties. I am also interested in knowing how the financial literacy unit we created, and the units created by our classmates, would work in practice. I wish there were a way to assess the effectiveness of and be able to modify the unit plans to make them even better.

The value of having a good partner was made very clear in this project. I am thankful that Kimberly and I were able to find a way to communicate that worked well for our situation. Since our schedules seemed to be opposite, using email for asynchronous communication worked the best for us. The wiki also allowed us both to work on the unit plan and make sure that our styles and ideas were meshing together. When working with a classroom teacher, I will now know the importance of finding a way to work together that suits our needs.

The peer evaluations have given us the opportunity to look back at our work and see areas for improvement. Our classmates are looking at the unit with fresh eyes and new perspectives, and that is very beneficial for us. I hope that Kimberly will be able to use the financial literacy unit that we created, and I am sure she would use some of the great suggestions our classmates have made. Overall, I think that this collaboration was a positive experience, and I look forward to collaborations in my future career.

Assessment

I am pleased to say that our unit is coming along nicely. Kimberly and I continue to work well together. Much like a true school collaboration, our biggest obstacle has been just finding the time to work on our project. Luckily, we have both been able to find time, and we are getting to the final stages of the unit.

Assessment

Assessment is an important component of this plan, and it will occur in several forms throughout the unit, helping to guide the teacher and media specialist in their teaching. Our main issue and main goal was to create assessments that would accurately reflect student learning and give feedback to guide teaching. To meet this need, we chose to incorporate both formative and summative assessments into the unit plan. In addition to assessment by the teacher and media specialist, the students will have the opportunity to reflect and assess themselves as individuals and as group members.

The summative assessment of our financial literacy unit will be a PowerPoint presentation. Students will have the opportunity to choose a career and research real-life potential financial scenarios. Students will present information about their chosen career, specific scenario and how to be financially successful in light of their scenario. A joint rubric that includes both academic and information literacy components will be used to score the presentations.

As a formative assessment, students will have an individual conference with the teacher or media specialist at least once during their research process. Students will also complete a checklist that evaluates their research sources. Observations will also be used to help guide the teacher and media specialist. Pre-tests will begin individual lessons, and post-tests will end them. This allows for immediate feedback for necessary modifications that may need to be made to better accommodate student learning.

Communicating Assessment

Evidence of student learning will be communicated to stakeholders in a variety of ways. A discussion of the project and samples of student presentations will be shown to parents at conferences. With parent and student permission, the presentations will be put on the school website for parents, administrators and community members to view.

Individual scores and rubrics will be discussed with parents. A graph will be created to show the overall improvement of all students based on a comparison of pre-test and post-test scores. This visual representation of student achievement in quantifiable terms will be presented to the principal and available to the school board or other administrators. Along with the graph, a listing of all of the standards met in the unit will be included.

Communicating the results of the collaboration with teachers will help to encourage future collaborations between teachers and the media specialist. A sample of an exemplary student presentation will be shown to demonstrate the high quality of work that resulted from the collaboration. A discussion of the numerous academic standards met will also be presented.

Looking Ahead

As we enter the final week of our collaboration, I am confident that the unit we are creating could be used successfully. I hope that Kimberly has the opportunity to use it with her students soon. Though we still have several areas of our unit to refine, our basic ideas have been solidified. I fully anticipate that we will have an excellent unit by next Friday, and I look forward to hearing about how the unit was implemented in the classroom!