(Below is the same project description as in C&I 335.)

Your Major Project this summer extends over two CTER courses: Michael Waugh's C&I 335 and Jim Levin's Ed Psy 387.  It is inevitable, though, that some projects begun with good intentions may prove to be dead ends.  Thus, no one should feel "married" to her/his project even over the length of one course; the start of a new course, Ed Psy 387, is an acceptable excuse to begin from scratch on a new project topic, if necessary.  However, the longer use you can make of a good project in the CTER program, the more insight you will  gain into all the stages necessary in incorporating technology in classroom instruction: brainstorming, lesson planning, developing the technology, conducting classroom trials, evaluating it during and after its implementation. 

Which topic to choose?

That depends entirely on whom you will be teaching, the subject area(s) you will be teaching, and the limits of your imagination!  What and whom will you be teaching this fall?  What topic would stimulate both your students and you?  The project might be something you experimented with in a class once but needed revamping or the right equipment -- or the right expertise, which you didn't have then.  It might be a development of something in your current curriculum with an added tech component. 

Think practically: What technology resources will be available to you at your worksite this fall?  How much expertise do you have now or expect to have by the end of the summer?  How elaborate of a project could you complete in two months? 

In addition, think in terms of educational reform:  what do my classes/students need more of?  More collaborative work, more self-paced study, more learning options for the disabled? How might technology fit into such goals? 

Thus, the Major Project involves: 

• a specific instructional topic (e.g. the Titanic disaster, percent)
• a specific audience (e.g. my 4th grade history students, non-techie high school history teachers)
• a hardware component (e.g. Apple G3s, scanners, etc.)
• a software component (e.g. a class Web page, an instructional program in C++ for drilling times tables, or a piece of commercial software, such as  Mathematica)
• a written piece of curricular design or lesson plan explaining how it is to be used in the classroom and how it will be evaluated.

In Michael Waugh's C&I 335 course in June, the emphasis will be on developing the curricular design component:  a unit plan composed of multiple lessons over multiple days (a week to 10 days) to be implemented in your class or school setting in the fall.  It should be detailed enough to fill several pages, formally written up with section headers as if to be submitted as a formal lesson plan to your school or district. The actual format this takes will normally depend on the lesson plan/curriculum  format required by your school district, although you are not exclusively bound by this  in the course.  This unit plan will form the main basis for how your courses grade is determined in C&I 335. 

Meanwhile, you will be starting work on the software component (the technology component) -- e.g. a special Website on the Titanic -- which will likely still be in very draft stages of development by the end of June.  The medium is up to you: Web site, commercial software, CD-ROM. You will not be evaluated on it until later in the summer when it is finished (or nearly finished). 

In Jim Levin's Ed Psy 387 course in July, you will continue to refine your curricular planning from the previous semester, but greater emphasis will be placed on the hardware and software components of the Major Project: the technology product that will be the instrument you use in your instruction this fall.  By the end of July, you should have a working model of it (or better yet, final product). 

Ideally, if well-thought-out and suitable, your summer project may even be usable later in Chip Bruce's Evaluation of Instructional Technologies course (C&I 490eit) this fall semester, or even Nick Burbules' and Chip's Ethics & Policies in Educational Technology (EPS 304) course in Spring 1999. 

Therefore, the more realistic and immediately applicable your project is to your real-life teaching situation, the more academic use you are likely to get out of it in the CTER program.  Therefore, think substantive; think long-term! 

Still unclear on the concept? Here is a Web page with examples of actual K12 tech projects to give you ideas: 

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/courses/edpsy387/su98/examples.html